


Pumpkin Pies & Twinkle Lights

by betheflame, kocuria, kocuria-visuals (kocuria)



Series: Stucky Bingo 2019 [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Darcy Lewis, BAMF Darcy Lewis, BAMF Tony Stark, Baker Darcy Lewis, Business Trip, Businessman Bucky Barnes, Disabled Character, Fluff, Happy Ending, Homophobia, Inspired by Hallmark Christmas Movies, M/M, MHEA Hallmark 2019, Mayor Steve Rogers, Mental Health Issues, Protective Tony Stark, Second Chances, Small Towns, inventor Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-01-16 08:56:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21268400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betheflame/pseuds/betheflame, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria, https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals
Summary: Once upon a time, Bucky and Steve were in love. Then tragedy struck and now they haven't seen each other in 12 years. Our story opens with Bucky's dramatic return to their hometown upon inheriting his grandfather's toy factory.A collaboration between kocuria-visuals and betheflame, this fic uses prompt 13 of the Hallmark Holiday Prompt Challenge 2019 and promises the power of true love, demonstrations of Darcy's awesomeness, and some of Tony's patented snark. Oh, and a very schmoopy happily ever after.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pals! Welcome to our story. We're so excited to share it with you. I (betheflame) did all the words, but the plot was 100% a collab, and kocuria did all the visuals because she's a goddess. 
> 
> We want to thank Juulna for her beta work and HogwartstoAlexandria for squeeing over an early draft to let us know we were on the right track.
> 
> kocuria's note: so, one day betheflame said 'I'm gonna write you a 3k stucky'. As you can see, things escalated quickly.

* * *

* * *

“Mayor Rogers?” 

Steve pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, Wanda?”

His intern’s nasal tone rang out over the speakerphone. “You have a call on line 1 from a woman named Natasha at Barnes Limited?”

Steve nearly dropped his coffee mug. “Did you say Barnes Limited?” 

He could hear the scuffle of papers, as though Wanda was searching for the note she’d scribbled down. “Yes, Mr. Mayor.”

“Honestly, it’s Steve, I promise, but put her through,” Steve sighed and tried to keep his mind from racing to fifteen years in the past, which is where his brain _ always _ went when he heard the name ‘Barnes’. 

“Steve Rogers,” Steve said in greeting. 

“Hello, Mayor Rogers,” a smooth voice with only a hint of a non-American accent drifted through the telephone line. “My name is Natasha Romanov and I am calling on behalf of Mr. James Barnes, who has recently inherited the controlling share of Sanditon Toy Factory, which I’m informed is located within the confines of your town.”

_ Fuck. Bucky got it? _He’d been so hoping it would have gone to Becca. “It is indeed, Ms. Romanov. How can I help you and Mr. Barnes?”

“Mr. Barnes is scheduled to visit his recent acquisition tomorrow,” the voice continued, “but we are unable to locate a suitable local airstrip for his plane to land on. There is a plot of land close to the factory, but we cannot access any records regarding ownership and if the owner would be willing to host our plane. Could you possibly put us in contact with the owner?”

Steve grinned, just imagining Tony and Darcy’s face when they found out that Bigwig Barnes wanted to use their lawn as a landing strip. “I can, ma’am, but I can promise you that they would not be interested in acquiescing your request. My advice is for yourself and Mr. Barnes to contact Danbury Municipal and land there.” _ Which Bucky should know because, you know, he fucking grew up here. _

“Mr. Barnes was hoping to avoid the long car ride between Danbury Municipal and Sanditon.”

“Well, Mr. Barnes will have to learn to live with disappointment. Most of us have,” Steve said cheerily. “Goodbye, Ms. Romanov. Sounds like I’ll be seeing you soon.” 

Steve hung up without giving the other woman a chance to reply and immediately grabbed his phone. Texting his best friend, her older brother, and her older brother’s husband, Steve had to stop himself from hitting the phone screen so hard that he’d shatter it. 

_ WhatsApp Chat: #StarkPlusTwo _

_ Steve: Bucky got the factory. _

_ Tony: Fuck, I really thought it would be Becca. _

_ Darcy: I told you guys, she renounced all family rights when Barney pulled that bullshit. That would include the factory. _

_ Tony: You’re wrong so often, though. _

_ Darcy: Fuck off, Tony. _

_ Tony: Doc’s at his office, so… _

_ Darcy: You are disgusting. _

_ Steve: FOCUS. _

_ Steve: Bucky is coming to town. _

_ Tony: Very different vibe from Santa. _

_ Steve: The pumpkin fest is next week. I do not need this right now. The tourists are always a pain in the ass and now the Ghost of Sanditon returns? _

_ Tony: Why do you know this? _

Steve smiled. No way he was missing their reaction. 

_Steve: I got a budget thing, I’ll tell you over drinks tonight. Clint’s at 5? _

_ Darcy: I’m already here, so yes. _

_ Steve: Darcy, it is 1:30. _

_ Darcy: I’m writing, I promise. _

_ Tony: Ah, yes, my sister, the great American novelist. _

_ Darcy: I have to figure out how Sarah and Max are gonna fuck for the first time. _

_ Tony: Well, can’t say I’ve had hetero relations in a hot minute, but from what I remember, his penis will go in her vagina, she probably won’t get off, but he’ll be generally satisfied because he saw boobs. _

_ Darcy: I’m writing a romance novel, not your high school experience. _

_ Tony: I was only bad at it because I didn’t care about the boobs! _

_ Steve: I swear to God, you two. Clint’s. 5. _

Steve was sure the conversation would continue without him while he finished his workday - it always did - but letting Tony and Darcy bicker in chat was one of the standards of their little found family.

Steve had spent his whole life - sans four years for college in Maine - in Sanditon, Connecticut, population 6,284. Born, raised, the whole nine, and he had spent most of the first twenty years glued to the sides of James “Bucky” Barnes and Darcy Stark. They were the Three Musketeers and much of the town gossip for their formative teenage years centered around which of the two boys Darcy was going to marry. Would she go for the wealthy, but kind, James, whose family could trace its lineage back to the American Revolution? Or Steve, with his blond hair and blue eyes and helpful attitude, whose family had only moved to Sanditon just prior to Steve’s birth? 

The question became slightly moot when Steve came out of the closet at homecoming their junior year, because everyone just _ assumed _ it would be Darcy and Bucky, in that way that small towns have about pretending that the whole world exists within its limits. 

What no one knew was that _ James _ had actually come out first, to Steve and Darcy, and Darcy’s brother Tony, and that Bucky and Steve started fooling around shortly after. They also didn’t know that Bucky was _ petrified _ to come out to his family, sure that they’d disown him, and so Tony, Darcy, and Steve had all made sure to keep him safe. 

Until the summer after their sophomore year of college, when Bucky’s grandfather lit their lives on fire. 

But now Bucky was coming back. 

_ Nope_, Steve shook his head sharply, shaking Bucky from his thoughts, as he grabbed his coat to walk over to Matt Murdock’s office for his 2:30 meeting. _ James Barnes is coming back. Bucky doesn’t exist anymore. _

* * *

* * *

James Barnes did not sweat through his shirts. 

He was calm. Cool. Collected. All three at all times. 

Which did not explain why he was on his fourth shirt of the day as his plane landed in Danbury Municipal Airport. 

“James,” Natasha said calmly. “You need to calm down.”

_ Calm down_? he wanted to hiss. _ Calm down. You called Steve Rogers to tell him I was coming and found out I can’t land a plane on Tony Stark’s land which used to belong to my family before everything went to complete shit and no one told me that Tony bought it for him and Darcy and that doctor he married and Jesus Christ how am I supposed to calm down when I am now fifty-seven minutes away from my childhood? _

Instead, he replied, “Thank you for your infinite wisdom, Natasha, I’ll get right on that.”

His eyes scanned the horizon as they flew north. It had only been about three weeks since his grandfather died and _ so much _ was still in flux. He needed this one thread tied off _ quickly _ so that he could move on. 

He returned to the papers in his lap, flipping through the cost projections and profit and loss statements for his family’s toy factory from the past three years. There was no option but to shutter it, really. At least none that made financial sense. The hiring processes had been terrible - as James flipped through performance reviews from the HR files, it appeared that people were perpetually promoted for who they were, rather than what they were capable of. 

Maybe if he’d been given the reins a few years ago, he could have righted the ship. But now it was simply too late. 

He ran his hands through his hair - knowing that the more he fussed with it, the larger it would get. He’d always had fluffy hair - which Darcy would tease him was full of secrets after _ Mean Girls _ came out - but he usually kept it gelled and tamed. Something about heading back to Sanditon was evidently defeating his professionalism. 

“The hotel is booked,” Natasha’s steady voice interrupted his thoughts. “The car will pick us up - the driver’s name is Hogan -”

James snorted an interruption, “Of course it is. Happy’s run that company since I was a kid.”

“-and he’ll transport us to the Sanditon Arms where we’re booked for the next three nights. Your first meeting with Mr. and Ms. Van Dyne is tomorrow at 8am,” she finished. “I’m assuming there are places to get dinner in this town?”

James smiled, but it was without joy. “A few, yeah. There’s your standard diner, a pizza place that claims to be New York style, your obligatory bar with pub grub - it was called Al’s, no idea what it is now - and if we drive back out a bit I heard they built an Olive Garden in the next town over.”

Natasha snorted. “I did not leave Manhattan to eat faux-Italian food. We’ll take our chances with the bar, I suppose.”

James nodded decisively and allowed himself to get lost in thought again. 

He knew the town narrative was that he’d broken up with Steve - which was _ technically _ true - but nothing was as simple as the calcified narrative made it seem. Steve had broken _ his _ heart just as much as Bucky had broken Steve’s. He’d given Steve a choice to stay together in the terms his grandfather had set and Steve chose to not accept terms. 

James snorted, but quickly covered it with a cough so that Nat wouldn’t take notice. ‘Chose not to accept terms’ had been his way of classifying Steve’s decision for over a decade, but now… Now they just sounded like words his grandfather would use and James wasn’t so sure he wanted to be his grandfather. 

He shook his head as though to clear it as the pilot announced they were landing. 

_ Well_, he steeled himself, _ this is a simple thing. You just go in, shut the factory down, sell off the remaining Barnes family assets, and get out. No need to catch up with Tony or to see Darcy or to talk to Steve on personal terms. He’s the mayor and I just need his help to move things quickly so I can leave Sanditon behind me completely. _

_ This isn’t personal, Barnes_, he reminded himself. _ Business is never personal_. 

If he knew how quickly he’d be eating those words, James probably wouldn’t have felt quite as positive as he cooly greeted Happy and climbed into the town car.

* * *

* * *

“CLINT,” Tony bellowed as he opened the door. “We have conversed regarding the serving of alcohol to my sister prior to the clock’s strike of five.”

“And,” Darcy bellowed right back from her seat at the bar, where she was still ostensibly writing. “We have conversed about you not being an overprotective and nosy _ ass_, so I guess everyone needs listening lessons.”

“The fuck is that way you’re talking, Stark,” Clint called from behind the bar. “Is it 1865 and someone forgot to tell me?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him to invent time travel and forget to tell all of us,” Sheriff Sam Wilson smiled into his lager and eyed Darcy, who smirked back. 

“You gonna keep drinking piss water, Wilson?” Darcy sassed. “Or you feel like graduating to real alcohol anytime soon?”

“Fuck off, Princess,” Sam replied good naturedly. “Piss water means that I have my head on straight when I inevitably have to keep you and your brother from actually killing each other in, oh, about three hours?”

Darcy threw a napkin at him. “I only kill Tony when he deserves it.”

“Which is every day,” Clint snarked back and went to get Tony’s favorite whiskey down from the shelf and poured two fingers with one ice cube. 

“Why has no one answered my question?!” Tony demanded as he kissed Darcy on the cheek and pulled Sam into a hug. For even while he was throwing around ridiculous accusations which would be roundly ignored by his circle of friends, he had to touch each one of them to let them know they were loved. It was the Stark way. 

“Can you remind me why I married him?” Dr. Stephen Strange murmured to Steve from his position at their table. 

“If I recall your proposal correctly, it was something about him making your life more exciting,” Steve replied as he took a sip of his stout. 

“I’d like to retract,” Stephen replied as his husband planted himself on his lap and gave him a loud, intentionally obnoxious, kiss. 

Steve laughed and called for Darcy to come to the table, which also brought Sam, and Steve cocked an eyebrow at his friend. She made a face that to most people would look innocuous but Steve was fluent in Darcy. _ Ah, so she wants him for more than a fuck buddy, and doesn’t think he wants her because she’s herself. This is going to be fun. _

“Chair?” Steve murmured to Stephen, noting the other man had his prosthetics off. 

“The weather change,” Stephen replied in an equally low voice. “Scar tissue swelled up and I honestly just could not be arsed today.” 

Tony shoved his face in between them and asked what they were whispering about. Steve was about to answer, when Stephen simply kissed his husband and guided Tony’s hand down to the bottom of his knee. Tony’s face twisted into an expression Steve couldn’t name, but that made him unspeakably jealous.

“You called this meeting, Rogers,” Stephen said evenly, as he raised his voice to address the table. “Don’t keep us in suspense any longer than necessary.”

“So, James Barnes is on his way here now-” 

He was interrupted by cries of _ what the hell _ from Clint - blatantly eavesdropping from behind the bar- and _ who is that _from Sam, who was newer to town, and waited for appropriate information to be disseminated. 

“Ooo, this is a fun game,” Tony clapped his hands. “So, he’s got the factory, but let me guess why Steve knows that Bigwig Barnes is making his grand return.”

“Tony,” his husband gently admonished him. “Use proper names.”

“It is his proper name, babe,” Tony affirmed with a sly grin. He popped off of Stephen’s lap suddenly - causing Stephen to huff slightly as he readjusted his wheelchair in light of the movement - and dragged a chair to the table. Steve rolled his eyes at the dramatics. 

“Get on with your guessing, Stark,” Steve said. “_Jeopardy _ starts in two hours.”

“He’s got a plane and I own the only part of town that you can land those on, so my guess is that he called your office to either, a: get an official escort from Danbury to here so his progress was not impeded by peons, or b: get me to let him land on my property like he wasn’t a fuckwit who broke my best friend’s heart into goddamn smithereens not twenty years ago and made my sister cry,” Tony looked straight into Steve’s eyes as his voice shifted from jovial to serious with that last phrase. 

“B,” Steve affirmed. “But his assistant called and she didn’t know it was owned by you because of your weird tech magic, I’m guessing.”

“Oh, fuck, that worked?” Tony turned surprised eyes at Stephen. “See, I told you I could make the cloaking device work.”

“I’m so proud,” Stephen said drolly, but everyone could see the spark of love in his eyes. 

“Well he can’t,” Tony replied and looked at Darcy for confirmation. She nodded swiftly and leaned forward on the table. 

“He doesn’t set foot anywhere we own without an apology,” she replied. 

“Well, that’s gonna be a challenge,” Sam interrupted. 

“Why’s that?” Steve asked. 

“Because unless strangers in three piece suits usually show up in the bar on Wednesday evenings and you folks forgot to tell me, I think your boy just walked in.”

Steve nearly toppled his chair twisting around on it to see the door. Standing just inside and next to a woman with long red hair and shoes that could probably actually kill people, was the only man he had ever loved.

The bar had other patrons in it, sure, but it wasn’t like Barnes wouldn’t notice them immediately. Steve rose to his feet and strode to the door. _ Better just rip the damn Band-Aid off_. The woman with James moved to a table a few feet away and settled herself in, giving James and Steve privacy of sorts. 

“James,” Steve said, shoving his hands in his pockets to keep from touching the man. “I heard you were on your way.”

The gray eyes that used to know every piece of Steve - both body and soul - did a full once-over before settling back on Steve’s face. He replied, “I got some business to take care of.”

“We heard.” Steve widened his legs in a defensive stance. “I’m sorry about your grandfather.”

“No you’re not,” James laughed. “No one is. He was a bag of dicks.”

Steve felt like he’d been shot. “Bag of dicks” had been Bucky’s favorite phrase to describe anyone he didn’t like and Steve hadn’t heard it since the last time they saw each other. 

“Condolences nonetheless,” Steve ground out. “Well, the town hasn’t changed a whole lot since you were here - I hear you’re at Sharon’s for the next couple nights.”

“Did she buy it from Peggy?”

_ No, I’m not doing walk down memory lane catching up shit, _ Steve thought and fought to keep his fists from clenching. “Peggy’s still around, just not running the inn every day. Sharon’s cooking is better, so make sure not to miss breakfast. If you need anything, most of us are pretty helpful.”

“I’m not,” Tony called from the table. 

“Didn’t think you would be, Stark,” James looked over Steve’s shoulder to the gathered group. 

“Glad you remember something,” Tony continued. Steve held up a hand to cut off his friend, shocked when Tony heeded it. 

“Quite a crew you’ve got back there,” James remarked. 

“It’s amazing how you build family when you choose to,” Steve replied evenly. “Speaking of, Clint runs the place and his burgers are the best. Hope and Scott said you’re over there tomorrow?”

“Yeah, first thing,” James affirmed. “Well, we’ll eat quickly. Long travel day.”

“Yeah, the private plane up from Manhattan is sure a hardship,” Darcy replied. 

“Clint, I think the music could do with being a little louder,” Stephen interjected. 

“Can I come to your office tomorrow, Steve?” James asked, lowering his voice. “Professionally, I mean; a meeting with the mayor. I want to explain some of my plans now that Jackwagon is dead.”

Steve swallowed. _ How can he be completely familiar and completely foreign all at once? _ “City Hall hasn’t moved and I’m always happy to meet with members of the business community.”

James nodded and opened his mouth to speak again before shutting it gently. Instead, he took a deep breath and looked Steve right in the eye. “I look forward to learning about how you run the town, Mr. Mayor. It was what you were always meant to do.”

Steve had _ no idea _ what to do with that so chose to simply nod and make his way back to the table. He caught Clint’s eye and knew the other man was heading over to take James’ order so they could get him out of the bar quickly.

“Eyes on him, please, Sam,” Steve murmured as he sat back down. “Just let me know when he and Ginger are gone.” 

Tony peered at Steve for a few seconds until Steve finally made eye contact with him. “The last thing, I could hear everything else but that. You were fine until that. What did he say.”

Steve took a few breaths and felt Darcy’s hand land reassuringly on his lower back. “He said I was always meant to run the town.”

“Fuck him,” Tony growled out. 

“Okay, someone explain, because that sounds like a lovely sentiment,” Stephen remarked. 

“It was our dream, when we were young,” Darcy supplied, not wanting to test the limits of Steve’s anxiety. “Steve and Bucky were gonna get married - or whatever equivilent the homophobic patriarchy would allow at the time - and Bucky would run all the family shit, Steve would be mayor, and I was going to marry Jonathan Taylor Thomas and force him to move back here so I could be the high school history teacher.”

“Well, that’s specific,” Sam chuckled. “One point five outta three a’int bad, I guess.”

“I just hadn’t thought about it in a long time,” Steve smiled wanly. “Just took my breath away for a bit, it’s fine. The past is never the past, right Darce?”

“No, chicken,” she leaned in to kiss his cheek. 

“Okay, enough about history repeating itself,” Tony said, a veneer of fake cheer falling over his voice, but one for which Steve was grateful. “My husband is under the impression that the 12th Doctor is the best doctor and I need back up, because it’s _ obviously _10.”

“You’re fucking nuts,” Darcy said. “It’s 13.”

“Dearest Darcy, you are blinded by sisterly solidarity,” Tony started and Steve let himself retreat into his head as his friends’ banter quickly became background noise. He ate something, he was sure, since Clint put food in front of him, and throughout the next several hours he attempted to process what had just happened. 

The last time he had seen James Barnes was the August before their junior year of college. The fight that had driven them apart had been started by good old Barnabas Barnes, as nearly everything terrible in Sanditon was instigated by that man somehow, but Steve’s stubbornness and Bucky’s fear had played their parts too. 

Steve knew that. Many, _ many _ professionals had helped him see that he made choices in the break-up as well and that his narrative that Bucky had done everything _ to _ him wasn’t helpful. He’d processed that so many times and he had thought he’d be ready to see Bucky. And perhaps he would have been. 

He should have known that James Buchannan Barnes, President of Barnes Limited, would be another matter entirely. 

* * *

_WhatsApp Chat: #DSNotLikeThat_

_ Darcy: u ok, pal? _

_ Steve: I’m fine, Darce. _

_ Darcy: You’re a goddman liar. _

_ Darcy: *goddamn. Fucking fingers. _

_ Darcy: Stands, though, because I’m not okay, so you can’t be okay. _

_ Steve: You’re not okay? _

_ Darcy: The first time we see him since it all went down? Of course I’m not fucking okay. Jesus, rogers, and you shouldn’t be either. _

_ Darcy: Have you called Dr. Dalton? _

_ Darcy: Are you now ignoring me? _

_ Darcy: Steven. _

_ Darcy: I love you, you know. _

_ Steve: I know. _

_ Steve: It felt like I was 20 again, but I also felt so so old. _

_ Steve: He looks perfect still. He should be not perfect any more. That should be the law. He should have grown a troll head or something. _

_ Darcy: No troll shaming, Steve. They’re simply misunderstood creatures. _

_ Steve: I have to be professional tomorrow. He’s coming to the office. _

_Darcy: Time? _

_ Steve: Dunno. After he sees Hope and Scott? _

_ Darcy: Okay, i’ll come write in your conference room. Back up. _

_ Steve: I love you, you know. _

_ Darcy: I know. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me (betheflame) on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/betheflame1) or [Tumblr](http://betheflame.tumblr.com) for more on these yahoos. You can also submit prompts and cajole me into writing faster - it usually works.
> 
> kocuria can be found on [Tumblr](http://kocuria.tumblr.com) too!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bucky learns some things and has some decisions to make.

* * *

* * *

“I’m sorry, you’re doing what?” Steve fought to keep his voice even.

“I’m shutting down the factory, Steve,” James replied calmly. “It’s nothing personal, but I’ve been looking at all the books and there’s no justification for keeping it open.”

“Like hell there isn’t!” Steve’s voice rose slightly and he took a deep breath to regain control. “There’s the livelihoods of the 140 people who work there.”

“Who aren’t making the company a profit, Steven,” James’ voice took on the tone of someone scolding a petulant child and Steve did not care for it.

“And yet, it’s managed to stay open for 128 years,” Steve responded. “You’ve owned it for what, a month? Can you not have a little patience? I thought you were a business genius? All these stories I read -”

“You been keeping up with me, Rogers?”

“-about you saving companies and making millions, surely you can do that here. In your hometown. At the factory that your_ great-grandfather built_.”

“Yes, thank you for my own history lesson, Steven,” James picked imaginary lint off his shirt and refused to meet Steve’s eyes. “But the answer is the same.”

“Can you give us through Christmas?”

James blinked a few times, and tilted his head, as though running calculations. “Fine. Out of respect for the history and such, I can give you until January 5th. If you can work out how to project more than a 10% profit margin by then, I’ll listen to a proposal.”

Steve worked to keep his face placid and held out his hand. “Deal?”

James took it - the first time the two men had touched in fifteen years. “Deal.”

“How long are you here for?” Steve asked, ignoring the pang in his heart from the small ways James and Bucky were the same person. It would have been so much easier on Steve’s heart for James to be a pure asshole.

“Natasha and I have a few more meetings scheduled the next several days, but I have to be back in New York on Saturday evening for an event,” James responded. “I see that Pumpkin Fest is this weekend; that still a thing?”

Steve snorted. “We’re in New England, Barnes. Of course it’s a thing.”

James laughed, a sound both rich and grating on Steve’s ears. “God, I made myself so sick in the pie contest.”

“Every fucking year,” Steve smiled softly in remembrance before he could stop himself._ No, Rogers. No_. His inner scolding voice sounded impressively like Darcy.

“Well, traditions are important,” James smirked.

“I’ve always thought so,” Steve replied, his words full of things neither man was willing to say, but his tone belied something that froze James’ face.

A few beats passed before they could faintly hear the grandfather clock in the lobby of Steve’s office strike the hour.

“Well, I better get going,” James said. “I need to meet with Phil Coulson over at First National.”

“And then Murdock, I’d assume.”

James nodded. “I’m sure I’ll see you around, Rogers.”

“I’ll be around.”

Steve counted to five as soon as James exited his office. “How much of that did you hear, Darce?”

“Oh, all of it,” she said simply as the door to the adjoining conference room creaked open and she emerged. Toeing off her shoes and climbing directly into Steve’s lap, she wrapped herself around him and the pair sat in silence for a few minutes.

“I can have him killed very easily,” Darcy whispered.

Steve laughed and buried his face a bit deeper into her hair. “I am 32 years old. I have two masters degrees from good schools, Darcy, I am a smart man. I run a pretty decent-sized town, and I am a graduate of several in-patient therapy programs that taught me how to process emotion, so explain to me why I feel like I just wrestled an alligator and now just want to take a nap.”

“Because the man whose actions sent you to those charming in-patient programs and whose actions drove you to earn those masters just walked back into our lives like he never left and it’s fucking infuriating,” Darcy whispered, and played with her best friend’s beard the way she knew he liked.

“Oh, no, he knows he was gone,” Steve corrected. “I could feel it. He doesn’t belong in this town as James, wearing the suits, acting like Barney. He knows it, but he doesn’t know what to do about it.”

“How can you tell?”

“He didn’t stop rolling his signet ring the entire time he was in here,” Steve said.

Darcy let out a small gasp. “You can’t really think that’s still a thing.”

“Well, I can’t see how it would change,” Steve said as he shifted her slightly and she moved to the adjacent place on the couch. “He never believed us that it was in the first place.”

“So, he’s in your office, sounding like his fucking grandfather, talking about P&Ls like he doesn’t remember that it’s half of his fucking elementary school teachers he’d be putting out of job, but you say he’s fiddling with his mom’s ring the whole time,” Darcy’s look turned pensive. “He knows Winnie would hate who he’s become.”

Steve let out a sound somewhere between a snort and a laugh and looked over at Darcy. “Can you just hear her now, her and Maria and Ma?”

“God,” Darcy laughed. “Your mom was the only one who never pressured me to marry either of the pair of ya.”

“That’s because Ma desperately wanted me to marry Tony,” Steve confided. “She thought he was the only one who would get me out of my shell.”

“Are you serious?”

Steve nodded. “She woulda loved Strange.”

“Well,” Darcy stretched, shifted, and plopped her feet into Steve’s lap. “So you say Bucky lives, we just have to unearth him from the pod person shell?”

Steve nodded.

“And explain to me how you’re not going to lose your shit when that happens and even why you want it to happen.”

Steve glared at Darcy. “I want it to happen because Bucky would never sell the factory and so the town needs Bucky to come back. As for the other - I’m fine.”

Darcy threw up her hands in frustration. “You are fine as in the 1990s expression for attractiveness, yes, I’ll concede that. You are zero percent fine, as in emotionally neutral.”

“Darce,” Steve’s voice had an edge of steel. “Back off.”

“No,” Darcy replied. “But I’ll do a temporary retreat maneuver. You need lunch and I need to stomp off some mad, so I’ll be back.”

“I love you, you know,” Steve called after her retreating form a few moments later.

“I know,” she called back.

He smiled and quickly called to Wanda to see if he had any calls. After his assistant told him that three city council members were clamoring for his attention on a very important issue regarding collection of recycling bins - heaven forbid they switch collection dates from Wednesdays to Thursdays - he told Wanda to continue to hold his calls.

He sat at his desk, opened the bottom drawer, and pulled out his pocket knife and current woodworking project. Well, one of the whittling elements of it, anyway. Arranging the garbage can the way he always did to minimize shavings on the floor, he got to work.

Strange was about to take his annual trip to South Africa to do medicine in remote parts of the country - which was one of the many reasons Steve thought the man was a goddamn hero - and Steve always sent him with wooden toys for the kids to play with. This week’s project was puzzles that were age appropriate for toddlers - large pieces with handles, painted with animals and easy to solve.

Woodworking had become part of his life after Bucky no longer was. He was ansty and angry all the time and one of his hipster housemates had suggested he start whittling. One thing led to another and pretty soon he was trying his hand at small pieces of furniture.

Then, when a particular period of high anxiety coincided with Stephen’s accident, it progressed to making larger pieces of furniture as Tony and Stephen reformatted their house to help with mobility. It had taken so long for Stephen to get prosthetic legs that didn’t bother his wounds that they’d just moved everything to the ground floor and Steve had helped them turn the dining room into a master bedroom, centered around a four-poster king sized bed he crafted after watching quite a lot of YouTube videos.

Now, he didn’t feel quite settled unless he had a piece of wood in his hand. Glancing back up at the door, thinking of James and Bucky and the difference between the two men that shared the same face, he realized he was about to go through quite a lot of carvings in the next few days.

* * *

“I don’t normally pry,” Natasha started and James barked out a laugh.

“That is a lie from the very pits of hell, Natasha Romanova, but continue.”

She grinned like the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Wonderland and took a sip of her vodka tonic. The pair were in the sitting room attached to James’ suite at the Sanditon Arms.

“What happened here?” Nat’s voice was slightly gentle, which James knew meant she picked up on how wigged out he was by being here.

“The short answer,” James swilled his whiskey around and took a sip before continuing, “is that I lived a whole life here before Barney took it away and replaced it with the one I live now.”

“I thought you left because you and Vanessa were tired of long distance?”

“That’s the company line,” James agreed. “But I didn’t meet Vanessa until the night we got engaged.”

Nat choked on her drink and set off a coughing fit. “You what.”

“Barney picked her, and she was perfectly happy to be the wife of the future president of a Fortune 500, and I was basically too tired to care,” James shrugged. “All told, I’m kind of impressed we lasted five years before we got divorced. There’s no reason we should have lasted five minutes.”

“There is also the fact that you have an avowedly anti-vagina stance on sex,” Nat smirked.

“There is that,” James smiled.

“So, I ask again,” Nat said. “What happened here?”

“I fell in love with Steve Rogers when I was 11 years old and I’m not, now that I’ve seen him, sure I’ve ever stopped loving him.”

“Well, that’s a statement,” Nat replied after a few beats of silence.

“I came out first,” James continued, as though he hadn’t really heard her. “But only to Darcy, Steve, and Tony, really, because I was, well - maybe you can tell, but we were kind of a name around town. I was raised with this whole idea of what it meant to be a Barnes of Connecticut and it did not involve loving Steve. It barely involved marrying Darcy because she wasn’t ‘our kind’.”

Nat snorted and James smiled sadly. “My family can trace its roots to before the Revolutionary War. I remember, even back when Dad was alive, being drilled on family history and all that bullshit. Mom hated it, and I think she thought she could make Dad change and stand up to Barney, but…

“But then Dad died and it was just me and Mom, and I can’t say I’m surprised that she found someone else, or that Barney cut the girls out when they chose her, but it still meant that everything fell to me.”

“He cut off your sisters,” Nat’s voice held a tone of disbelief, “because they wanted to live with their mother.”

James laughed, but there was no warmth in it. “Welcome to Gramps. Bag of dicks on a good day, literal incarnation of Satan on a bad one. Yeah, Mom refused to send us all to boarding school, which made him mad and he constantly claimed she didn’t understand.”

“When did your dad die?”

“I was thirteen, Becs was 9, and Sarah was 6.”

“And when did your mom re-marry?”

“I was nineteen,” James replied. “And it kicked off everything that happened here, as you keep asking. After the wedding, Barney sent the girls certified letters - mind you, we all lived in the same fucking town - and told them that in order to claim their roles in the company, they’d have to go to the aforementioned boarding schools and finishing schools and all this other nonsense like it was 1840. They refused and he cut them off from any future shares of the company.”

“God, no wonder you don’t miss him.”

“Well, it gets so much worse,” James refilled his drink as he continued. “At that point, they were still beneficiaries of Dad’s will - so college would be paid for, they each would be pretty set for their first jobs out of college, etcetera - but then he found me and Steve.”

Nat was quiet - letting the silence stretch to accommodate James’ obvious grief.

“I was getting ready to come out, fully. Tony had helped me a lot, actually, in terms of strategizing and thinking. His first patent had gotten picked up and he was starting to make a fuck ton of money and as I watched how he handled it and how he was providing for Darcy without attaching any strings to it, I realized that we, as a family, could be different. I was getting ready… and then Barney literally walked in on me and Steve with his dick down my throat.”

Nat gasped. “Holy fuck.”

“Old man started ranting and raving and over the next few days he told me that I’d either ‘tuck that nonsense back in a box’ and marry a girl of his choosing or he’d not only cut me out completely, he’d supersede Dad’s will and the girls would be penniless. Mom and her new husband were lovely, and she had some family money still, but…

“I panicked. I did. I gave Steve an ultimatum, he didn’t like it, and so the last time I saw him before today was seriously twelve years ago.”

“Is that why your mom and sisters aren’t in any of your wedding pictures?”

James grimaced slightly. “Yeah, Becs stopped speaking to me for a while there, she was so mad I went along with Barney. But we’ve talked since, and she gets why I did what I did. Still hates it, but understands.”

“So, what are you gonna do now?”

James was silent for a few moments. “He’s different, Nat.”

Nat snorted. “Well, it’s been 12 years, so one would kinda hope.”

James shook his head. “No, Steve was the one of us who was always grounded, he always knew who he was. He was the best of us - me, Darcy, Tony, we were all dramatic, flaily kinda kids. Darcy and Tony’s parents were always fighting, and, well, you’re aware of my family, but Steve and Sarah were our home base. Sarah was one of those moms that had our favorite snack stocked, not just Steve’s.”

Nat smiled. “That’s how Val and I want to be.”

“And you will be,” James smiled. He took a sip of his water and continued. “There’s something - god, never ever let Vanessa hear me say this, but his vibrations are different.”

Nat howled with laughter. “Well, I’m glad you learned something in your marriage besides how to look pretty for pictures.”

“I knew that already,” James winked.

“But seriously? Jamie, you haven’t seen him for 12 years. That feels like something you can’t possibly know.”

James shook his head. “No, Nat, I promise you. Something about him is different, but in a good way. Like, he was solid and now he’s solid-er? That’s not a word, but-”

“He’s your person,” Nat replied quietly. “Everything you just told me tonight tells me that he’s… he’s your Val. So, if you tell me something is different, then I believe you.”

James smiled at his friend - his only friend, really, since he ran out of Sanditon so fast his feet were on fire. “I didn’t know I still felt like this,” he whispered.

“Coming home looks like a lot of different things,” Nat replied.

“I still have to sell the factory,” James replied.

Instead of responding, Nat got up from her place on the love seat and went to her briefcase. She took out a folder and handed it to James. “Here’s the P&Ls for the entire North American division. Do we?”

James looked at the folder and back at his PA, who kissed him on the forehead and bid him goodnight.

* * *

By the time James heard the town clock chime 3pm on Friday afternoon, he felt ragged.

The meetings had all gone perfectly, on paper.

Deeds of ownership were transferred, other various legal documents signed. He had a few hard conversations with the Van Dynes, but he didn’t think they went poorly. Nearly everything on Nat’s stupid little checklist was checked off - except the 3pm meeting.

Which, considering that James felt emotionally raked over the coals already, was one he was not prepared for in the least.

Charles Xavier and Barnabas Barnes were Hatfields and McCoys level enemies. All of his life, James was taught that the Xaviers were dirty immigrants (they came over in the 1800s, 200 years too late for Barney’s xenophobia) and that Charles was not to be trusted. He never really paid it any mind, to be frank, because Charles was a bachelor, and his grandfather’s age, and wasn’t someone he’d exactly been around all that often.

Charles was, however, now the President of the Chamber of Commerce and James knew that meant a face-to-face meeting was in order to make the transitions as smooth as possible.

But he’d already spent the past two days learning about who his grandfather really was. And he just wasn’t sure he was up for any more reality.

_“I’m sorry, he what?” James blinked at Matt Murdock, the local family lawyer._

_“He sent the contracts to sweatshops,” Murdock confirmed. “Just some of the parts, but once Tony got wind of it, he stepped in and bought the presses.”_

_“Our family made cider presses for, like, a hundred years.”_

_“Well, your grandfather started having them made in China by nine-year-olds,” Murdock’s voice held little sympathy for James’ revelation. “I’m sorry, were you under the impression your grandfather sold off everything out of the goodness of his heart?”_

_“I didn’t know until this week that he sold off everything,” Bucky snapped. “We’re a huge multi-national, Murdock. I oversee all of North America and Europe. He was in charge of Sanditon, I didn’t pay much attention.”_

_“Well, fuck you, Barnes, because you should’ve. Thank God Stark had the town’s back.”_

That was the story over and over again as James went from office to office, from thing he thought he owned to thing he thought he owned. Turns out that of all the assets listed in Barney’s will, the only one he actually still owned was the toy factory. Stark had bought all the rest over the past several years.

_“Why?” He stared at Phil Coulson at First National Bank. “Why would he do that?”_

_“My guess is that he could so he did. Tony’s like that_.”

James ran his hands through his hair and opened the door to the Chamber of Commerce office. “Hi, I’m James Barnes? I have a 3 o’clock with Mr. Xavier?”

The woman seated at the front desk brusquely nodded and told him to head back, that Charles was expecting him.

The bald man wheeled his chair around the front of his desk and motioned for James to take a seat at a small coffee table. They exchanged pleasantries and then rehashed most of what James had learned over the past several days.

“Boy, what did your grandfather tell you about me?” Charles asked at one point.

James blushed. “Nothing positive, sir.”

Charles laughed, his crisp accent permeating the room. Years spent at a boarding school had given the man an upper class English accent and James had always found it charming. “I can’t imagine that he would.

“Now, people will tell me not to speak ill of the dead, but I am old, and all there is to speak of your grandfather is ill. You have learned much of this, and I know you have a lot to think about, both as a man and as a business owner. I know you think you have a lot of choices ahead of you, but the way I see it, you only have two,” Charles held up his fingers to count off. “You can be your grandfather or you can be the boy who loved Steve Rogers and Darcy Stark like they were your own. You chose your family when you were a boy, I never figured out why you left them for a bunch of assholes who happened to share your blood. You wanna be your grandfather, I’ll kindly ask you to show yourself out. You want to be Bucky again, I’ll help you clean out the mansion and move you back in myself.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we find out what happened all those years ago... or, at least a _version_ of those events. The found family is strong in this chapter, which is good, because Steve's gonna need them.

“Well, Dr. Stark,” Steve says grandly. “What brings you to my office on this day during which I have absolutely no time to spare?”

Tony brandished the bag of tacos he came bearing. “I had a meeting up in Bethel and the taco truck was there. You always forget to eat during a festival week.”

Steve accepted the tacos with a raised eyebrow. “And you _never_ keep track of festival weeks.”

“Fine, my sister texted, are you going to complain or just take the fucking tacos?”

Steve laughed and gestured to the sitting area, where Tony plopped on a couch like he owned the joint. Which, considering he owned most parts of the town, he almost did.

“What festival is this anyway? The pumpkin one, right? I’m sponsoring some shit, I think,” Tony said with a mouthful of carne asada taco.

Steve shook his head in bemusement. “You’re the chief sponsor of the whole thing, you idiot. Through the brewery and bakery.”

“Ah, yeah, we’re debuting that pumpkin beer that Clint’s been working on for fucking ever,” Tony nodded. “And I think Darcy has some scones? Pies? Both?”

“Your attention to detail is staggering.”

“I hired Pepper for a reason,” Tony replied.

“Her name is Virginia,” Steve corrected for the fifth time that week.

“But if we keep using Pepper, she’ll grow to like it,” Tony replied with a grin.

Steve rolled his eyes and the pair finished their lunch over casual conversation about the festival and Tony’s feelings about Darcy and Sam. (_“I’m still pissed you’re not straight, because you are the only one I trust with her, but I can only do the caveman chest pounding so long before she kills me, and Wilson seems solid.”_)

“So, Barnes.”

“I’m fine,” Steve replied, cleaning up their debris.

“I haven’t fallen for that in, like, six years, Rogers. So, Barnes,” Tony repeated.

“I’m not triggered,” Steve clarified. “It’s weird, but temporary. He’s leaving again once he finishes with all the meetings and then I can focus my energy on making sure that either the factory stays open or we find jobs for everyone there now.”

“I don’t have the cash right now,” Tony replied, “but if he’ll give me to Q2 of next year, I can make it work.”

“That’s good to know, thanks,” Steve smiled. “But you cannot just keep being the town savior. Pretty soon, folks are going to figure out it’s always you.”

“Please, all people know about me in this town is that I helped Clint start the brewery, we bought the bar together when Al died, and that Darcy owns the bakery because she’s obsessed with cake and is too manic to only have one job. Small towns see what you want them to see, and I’ve made them believe that Stephen’s the one with money. They just assume Darcy and I are Scared Maria and Drunk Howard’s kids, like we’ve always been. I can afford to get a little bold,” Tony shrugged. “We’ll figure out something, but I can give zero fucks about that, right now - I’m worried about you.”

“I’m not going to spiral again,” Steve’s voice took on a defensive tone.

“I can be worried about your heart and not be worried you’ll end up in the hospital again, sugarplum,” Tony replied evenly. “I’m the former at the moment, for the record.”

“He flies tomorrow,” Steve repeated. “And it’s not like he’s going to suddenly show up at the festival and it’ll be like it all used to be. He’s not going to enter the pie contest, he’s not going to judge the scarecrows, or help any of the kids onto the hay wagon in all the ways that used to make my heart skip beats. He and his three-piece-suits are going to get back on his private jet and it’ll be fine.”

Tony was quiet for a moment, which Steve had long ago learned to fear. “Here’s what I’ll say to that. Darcy and I talked and there is still some of our Bucky in that man somewhere and I’m nervous that Bucky will show up tomorrow. And I just want to know if you know what you’ll do if he does, Mr. Mayor.”

Steve took a deep breath and refused to acknowledge that he was petrified of the exact same thing. “Well, then I guess we’ll deal with it like you and Darcy and I have dealt with everything since he left - together.”

A smile curved the corner of Tony’s mouth. “Love you, kid.”

“I am three years younger than you,” Steve protested as Tony pulled Steve into a hug.

“Don’t care,” Tony replied and Steve laughed at their well-rehearsed script. He could, he supposed, do worse in a big brother than Tony Stark.

* * *

_What’s App Chat: #DarcyIsTheBest_

_Tony: I saw you changed the name again._

_Darcy: *blinks in innocent little sister*_

_Tony: You’re the worst. Have you seen Steve today?_

_Darcy: Not since I gave him the pies, why?_

_Tony: I haven’t either. Stephen’s got one of his weird feelings._

_Darcy: Your husband._

_Tony: I know._

_Tony: But he’s usually right._

_Tony: Which is even more infuriating._

_Tony: Why is he blowing up our group chat?_

* * *

* * *

_WhatsApp Chat: #TheDoctorsandDarcy_

_Stephen: *attached image*_

_Stephen: Am I hallucinating._

_Stephen: Am I?_

_Darcy: Fuck._

_Tony: Fucking cocksucking fuck._

_Stephen: So, no, I’m not. James Barnes is signed up for the pie eating contest._

_Tony: Darcy, call your boy toy NOW. Eyes on Rogers immediately._

_Tony: Darcy._

_Tony: DARCY._

_Darcy: Good fuck, T. I don’t communicate telepathically just because I’m fucking him._

_Tony: I don’t know how you heteros do it._

_Darcy: Stephen._

_Stephen: Honey, you’re dramatically flailing._

_Darcy: Steve’s at the apple butter booth with May and Peter. Who’s closest?_

_Stephen: I am, going now._

_Tony: I’ll go check in with Wanda and see what his official mayor shit is and if Sam can cover._

_Darcy: Both of you please remember Steve is a grown-up with agency? You can’t hog tie and drag him out just because you’re worried._

* * *

Steve felt the heavy hand on his shoulder and connected it to the presence of Stephen indicated by the slight smell of antiseptic he seemed to carry with him. “Steve,” the voice was quiet but forceful in his ear. “Do not move your face as I tell you this, but James Barnes is here and signed up for the pie eating contest.”

Steve felt all the air leave his body as he made sure his face stayed frozen and his legs kept him upright. He nodded slightly to let Stephen know he’d been heard.

“Nod once if you want me to get you out of here immediately and have Sam take over the day. Nod twice if you want me to make a big deal about you and I going to get funnel cake and we’ll find Tony and make a plan.”

Steve smiled at a few of the townsfolk who passed by his position in the corner of the Parker Family Farms booth. Finally, he nodded twice and Strange raised his voice back to normal volume to complain about Tony being a child who was demanding funnel cake.

“Well, let’s go get Tony before he has a full temper-tantrum,” Steve replied, proud of himself for how steady his voice sounded. Guided by Stephen’s firm grip on his elbow, the pair cut through the crowd to find Tony seated at a picnic table with a funnel cake already procured.

“Husband!”

“You are covered in powdered sugar,” Stephen responded, pressing a kiss to Tony’s forehead and avoiding his grabby hands. The newcomers each took their seats at the table.

“And you are made of sugar, so it all works,” Tony giggled.

Steve knew what they were doing - overcompensating, giving him another conversation to get lost in if he needed to - and, oh man alive, was he grateful.

“You’re like a toddler, Tony,” Steve croaked out, praying no one around them would notice that he was controlling his breathing like he was in a lamaze class. “We should start carrying wet wipes.”

As they bantered back and forth about what an unholy mess the engineer was making, Steve felt the bench dip on either side of him and could smell Darcy’s shampoo before he could feel her wrap herself under his left arm. The other side was Tony’s Pepper, holding out a caramel apple to Steve with a raised eyebrow and eyes full of warmth.

He accepted the offering of his favorite autumn snack gratefully, and let himself be taken care of for a few seconds while he focused on breathing and working his mental steps.

_You are loved_, he reminded himself, _and you are not a secret, you are not a problem, you are not an embarrassment._ He forced himself to lean back into Darcy, to let her ground him in this moment and not the one that had filled his nightmares for the better part of a decade. _He is one man, and we were basically kids when we were dumb, and he may be different or he may be the same, but what matters is that you are loved by these people at this table and you are safe._

On that horrid night, all those years ago, when Bucky had yelled the ultimatum at him - to come with him to New York and be his secret lover while Bucky married whoever Barney chose for him and lived a whole life Steve would never be a part of - something inside of him both calcified and crumbled. Years of therapy had taught him why, and had given him tools for surviving his own brain…

But none of them had taught him what to do to survive Bucky showing back up in someone else’s skin.

“Hey love,” Darcy whispered. “How much longer do you need to be Mayor Steve?”

Steve checked his watch. “Three, four more hours?”

“What would happen if you suddenly got the flu?”

Steve let the side of his mouth curve upwards. “I’d carry around a bucket for three or four more hours.”

“You should go home.”

“I should do my job,” Steve replied. “But, I will concede I need one of you with me when I announce the fucking pie eating.”

“Surely someone else-”

He cut her off. “The Mayor of Sanditon has announced the pie eating contest for thirty years, Darce, and I do not have the energy to deal with Mrs. Campbell at the Historical Society if we deviate and cause some sort of historical crisis. I’ll announce the damn contest, you’re just going to do it with me.”

“Me,” she replied drolly. “Me, who would rather kill that man than be in proximity to him? No, that’s not a good idea. I just got my nails done and I don’t want to waste a manicure scratching his eyeballs out.”

Steve snorted and locked eyes with the town’s own eccentric extrovert.

Tony just nodded and checked his own watch. “I’ll do the crowd pump-up stuff, and you just take care of being mayor, okay?”

Steve nodded and let out the breath he had been holding while Tony talked. Of course his family was going to have his back. Why did he expect any different?


	4. Chapter 4

_ What’sApp Chat: #BooBear _

_ Sam: I resent the chat name. _

_ Darcy: Well, when you show up for dates on time, you get to name the chat. _

_ Sam: I was chasing a suspect! _

_ Darcy: You were chasing down Wade again for the fortieth time this month. You were not too busy to text. _

_ Sam: We’re not doing this right now. _

_ Sam: I just wanted to know where you went. I couldn’t find you after the bonfire started. _

_ Darcy: Too much BigWig Barnes. I forgot there are new folks around here who just know the name and that he’s the hot grandson. Too many folks cheered for him in that contest. _

_ Sam: I’m sorry, baby. _

_ Sam: Can I know the story soon? _

_ Darcy: Yeah, I promise. I need some questions answered first. _

_ Sam: I’m good backup. Both as boyfriend and sheriff. _

_ Darcy: We using that word now? _

_ Sam: Sheriff? Well, I got elected a few years ago. _

_ Darcy: Fuck off. _

_ Sam: Be safe, honey. _

_ Darcy: I have my taser. _

_ Sam: I meant with your heart. _

* * *

Darcy put her phone away and bit back a smile. How she ended up with Sam Wilson was a delightful mystery for another moment. Now was for time traveling. 

Darcy didn’t remember a part of her childhood that didn’t have Tony, Steve, and Bucky in it. All of her memories contained one or all of them - from hiding from her father’s shouting, to climbing trees down by the creek, to studying for the SATs, to the first time Steve punched someone out because the creeper wouldn’t stop looking at her boobs. When Tony went off to college when she was 12, it had _ really _ been her and her boys against the world. 

There was no love purer than what she felt for the three of them. Which is why Bucky’s departure seared so deeply. She _ still _ couldn’t believe he had gone with Barney and _ still _ couldn’t believe he left without _ talking _ to her_. _

“Hey Sharon.” Darcy entered the inn through the kitchen, knowing that’s where she’d find her friend. 

“Hey Darce.” Sharon smiled warmly as she looked up from the pile of pots she was washing. “He’s in 205.”

Darcy laughed. “Here, let me help with those first.”

Sharon shook her head. “Nah, don’t worry about it. Go take care of business. Besides, Hope and Carol are on their way.”

“I’m not going to be _ that _ loud,” Darcy rolled her eyes. 

“Girl,” Sharon blew her bangs out of her face and laughed. “You looked ready to kill him with fire. If nothing else, we’ll be in my apartment when you’re done if we have to do some voodoo dolls or something.” 

Darcy chuckled and kissed her friend on the cheek before winding her way through the inn and up the stairs. She took a deep breath and knocked on 205. She heard shuffling and a call of “_Just a second_,” before the door swung open and her functional brother stood before her, just like he had for so many years. Except, this one had sadness in his eyes and stress in his shoulders and her Bucky never had those. 

“Darcy,” James smiled warily, “I wondered what was taking you so long.” 

“Where’s the ginger?” Darcy peered around James as though Nat was hiding in his room. 

“_Natasha _ returned to New York last night,” James replied. “We finished official business and she has her family to get back to.”

“Poison Ivy has a family? Fascinating.” 

“God, you’re still a judgy bitch.”

“And you’re still a fucking coward.”

James sighed. “What do you want, Darcy?”

“I want you to fucking _ explain yourself_,” Darcy hissed. “What the fuck else would I want?”

James ran a hand through his hair. “Well, we’re not doing it in the hallway, so I guess get in here.”

Darcy blinked. “Are you really going to answer my questions?”

James nodded. “I’m tired, Darcy. I’m tired of being alone and this fucking town - anyway, yes, I’ll answer your questions.”

Darcy paused, worrying her bottom lip and still not stepping over the threshold. 

“Then I’m calling Steve.”

James’ eyes widened and a look of sheer panic crossed his face. 

Darcy held up her hand to stop whatever was about to come out of his mouth. “The three of us. Even after you two started fucking, it was always the three of us and, sometimes, the four of us, against the world. You left the team, but the team still exists, so if we’re doing this, then I’m calling Steve.”

“Not your brother, not yet.”

“Fine,” Darcy agreed as she pulled out her phone and dialed on speakerphone. “Hey, Stevie?”

_ “Darce, it’s after 9 and you’re using the phone, please tell me you’re alright.” _

“I’m at the inn. Hallway outside of James’ room.”

“_What the hell are you doing there?” _

“Making him give us answers,” she replied, with a raised eyebrow in James’ direction. 

“Stevie, I owe you some if you want ‘em,” James said, and Darcy noticed he sounded a little less crisp than his James self, and a little more like their Bucky. 

There was silence on the other end of the phone for a few beats and Darcy was worried Steve lost the connection. 

_ “Give me ten.” _

Darcy ended the call and gingerly placed her phone back in her pocket. “I can’t look at you right now, I can’t… I fucking missed you, you motherfucker, and I can’t look at you without either hitting you or crying and I was all ready to get over here and have you be a defiant asshole and…”

“Darcy,” he said gently, cutting her off. 

“No,” she rounded on him and waved her pointer finger in his face. “No. You don’t… no. I’m going to get snacks. I need something to do with my hands.”

She left the room without a backwards glance and felt the tears begin to spill as she headed down the stairs. Of all the reactions she expected to showing up at his door, him graciously offering to pry open their past and answer their questions wasn’t in the top four hundred. 

“His fucking smile is still the same,” she muttered to herself as she rounded the corner into the small hospitality area the inn kept stocked for guests and headed for Sharon’s secret stash of peanut butter cookies. Shoving two into her mouth immediately - if she was chewing, maybe she could stem the tears - and decided to make some tea. 

“Tea’s good for hard conversations, right?” she mused out loud. “Who the fuck am I talking to?” Didn’t stop her from muttering continually as she waited for the kettle to boil and the tea to steep, going over questions she’d been holding onto for _ years _ , reliving moments where she could only ask _ what if _ over and over again. The idea that possible answers were at the top of the stairs was too much to imagine. 

She heard the front door to the inn click open and she stuck her head out into the foyer. Steve was there, looking glassy eyed and a little dazed. 

“Honey,” she called, getting his attention. “I made us all tea and I’m stealing Sharon’s cookies. Help me carry it all up.”

“Something to do with our hands,” Steve smirked. “Classic Darcy Stark.”

“You don’t grow up with Tony as a brother without understanding the value of having something that means not strangling him immediately.”

Steve barked out a laugh and followed his sister up the stairs.

* * *

* * *

For many years after, Steve wouldn’t be able to tell you how he got from his house to the inn that night. He was proud he didn’t hit anything or anyone with his car, and fairly pleased he had remembered to put on pants. All he did remember was that the sound of that voice over the phone - the one with the dropped consonants of their childhood, bred from all those hours around his mother’s kitchen table with her soft Brooklyn accent - made his stomach drop and his feet move on their own. 

When they got settled, Steve swallowed hard and just said one word. 

“Why?”

James nodded. “Yes, let’s start there, because there’s things I never told you and that wasn’t fair.”

Steve noticed he was fiddling with that signet ring again - even though he was in soft flannel pajama pants and a grey henley sleep shirt and clearly ready for bed when Darcy accosted him. The ring had always been Bucky’s grounding element - from his mother, like six generations back or something, and fiddling with it had always been a tell. 

He hoped against hope that he was right and that it still was. 

“So, the night that Barney found us,” James cleared his throat and looked right at Steve, “I was going to propose.”

“I’m sorry?” Steve nearly swallowed his tongue. 

“Propose, to you. I had a ring,” James shifted nervously. “I still have it.”

Steve’s brain raced to keep up with what he was hearing. Thankfully, Darcy stepped in and filled the silence. 

“You were, what, gonna take him up over the border to Massachusetts or something?”

James nodded. “I had done some research and I remember finding out that there was a form we had to fill out as an out-of-state resident and that they warned us that we’d never be eligible for Connecticut state benefits or anything, but that the marriage would be _ legal_. I woulda called you _ husband _ and that’s all I wanted.” 

Steve whispered the word _ husband_, like he was testing it out on his own tongue. He and Buck had _ never _ talked about marriage. They’d talked about what they were gonna do after college, and what Bucky’s plans were for some of the companies, and how Steve was going to use his history degree for any practical use, but marriage? No. 

“And then Barney found us,” James continued, “and, well, we both know. But there were a few things missing from the offer I made you the next day and I shoulda… I should have been clearer as to what I was up against.” 

“You asked me to be your secret whore,” Steve croaked out. 

“I did not,” James protested. “I -”

Steve interrupted, fighting to keep his voice even. “I know you never used those words, trust me, I cannot forget that conversation. You said we’d still be together and you’d take care of me, but that we could never be public about it until Barney died because you had to do your family duty.”

“And I did -”

“HOW IS THAT DIFFERENT THAN BEING YOUR SECRET WHORE?” Steve exploded, all the rage of twelve years finally spilling out. “HUH? EXPLAIN _ THAT _ TO ME, JAMES.” He shot to his feet and began pacing. “Explain to me how I was supposed to feel like that was anything like love, how that was anything-”

“He was gonna marry Becs off if I didn’t do it,” James blurted. “She was still underage, and he had, I don’t know, rights or whatever, but he was definitely going to cut her and Sarah off unless I followed his plan.” 

“You know he couldn’t have done that,” Darcy said slowly. 

“Couldn’t he?” James laughed, a sound that scraped the room without any humor. “Twelve years ago, Barney had nearly every judge in this county in his pocket. He told Witherspoon or Anderson or what’s his nuts with the giant side-burns-”

“- Bowers -” Steve replied reflexively. 

“- Bowers,” James nodded. “You think he called one of them and said that Becs needed to be shown who was boss or some fucking patriarchal nonsense that they woulda married her off just to keep him happy? It was going to be to Pierce, by the way, he had it all planned out.”

Bile rose in Steve’s throat at the idea of Rebecca Barnes marrying Alexander Pierce, known philanderer and abuser. He swallowed it back down before replying, “So we were the sacrifice instead.” 

James nodded. “I had two weeks to move to Manhattan, into the Upper East Side house - the one that my cousin Carter was living in - and if he found any evidence of me talking to you before I married Vanessa, the deal was off, Becs would marry Pierce, and all of us - and I mean _ all _of us would suffer.”

“Bullshit,” Darcy responded from her position on the couch. “We have been best friends since we were in goddamn diapers and you couldn’t figure out a way to do a smoke signal? Fuck, the tin cans we used in the park are probably still burried under that swing!”

“I was _ petrified_,” James replied. “I… I panicked. He had files on you, and Tony, and Steve, by the way. Files that included your bank details and your cell phone records and only God knows what else. He had Steve’s Napster download list, for fucks sake. You three were part of the deal. If I followed his plan, he left you alone. If I chose Steve, he ruined all of you. I would not, I _ could not _ risk you.”

“So you destroyed us instead,” Steve replied evenly. 

“No,” James shook his head. “I saved you.”

“No,” Steve repeated, “sorry, I misspoke. Darcy and Tony were basically fine-”

“-Steven-” Darcy interrupted but was cut off with a wave of Steve’s hand. 

“I was hospitalized for five weeks with a complete nervous breakdown - I was nearly cataonic - and it took six years of nearly daily therapy to claw my way back to functional, so fuck you that _ you saved me_,” Steve snapped. 

* * *

James froze in place from where he had been pacing. “You _ what_.” The statement came out on an exhale. 

“We basically lost him for a bit there,” Darcy supplied, obviously fighting tears. 

James could not process what he was hearing. He gave up _ everything _ so that Steve would be safe, so that everyone would have the life they wanted. _ He _ was the only one who was supposed to suffer. 

“I don’t understand,” he finally managed to whisper and saw both of their heads spin in his direction. 

“What about _ he was in the hospital _ don’t you understand?” Darcy replied, speaking slowly as though she was explaining things to a child. 

Which, in terms of this conversation, James supposed he was. 

“Everything; I don’t understand any of it,” James confessed. 

The pair exchanged glances and James could tell they were making a _ decision_. Back when it was the three of them, when they could basically read each other’s thoughts and acted as a unit, emotional disclosures were made together, so he knew what was happening. He’d just never been on the outside of it before. Darcy and Steve were deciding to let him in again, maybe, just enough to tell him this. He held his breath with the weight of it. 

Finally, Steve nodded and turned to James. “When you told me that, when you made that offer, something in me snapped. You were going to ask me to marry you that night? I was going to ask you to come out of the closet. I was _ so tired _ of hiding and so tired of not being able to love you fully and openly and it had just begun to drain me.

“So,” Steve continued, “when you said that I’d have to be kept a secret for potentially multiple more decades, something in me snapped. You were, and still are, the only man I’ve ever loved and the idea that you only loved me enough to keep me a secret was just too much, James.”

Tears had begun to slip down his face and James felt the salt on his lips. It had _ never_ occurred to him that Steve felt like a secret that he wanted to keep. _ Steve _ was the only reason he’d even considered coming out! It was James himself who was the coward. 

“I,” Steve swallowed audibly. “I finished college in kind of a daze.”

“Still made Dean’s List and graduated Summa Cum Laude,” Darcy interjected proudly. 

Steve smiled blandly. “Yeah, and then went right into a Master’s in Community Development up at Northeastern, and it was about halfway through the second semester that I just… I stopped getting out of bed.”

“Tony got paranoid,” Darcy supplied, “when we hadn’t heard from him in a few days, and so got nosy and found him and he was barely responsive, so I got in the car and drove up and by the time I got there, Tony had bullied someone into getting him admitted somewhere and a full psych work-up.”

“He was with Strange for, what, two weeks at that point?” Steve looked over at Darcy, who nodded in confirmation. “So I don’t remember any of this, obviously, but the way Tony tells it is that’s when he fell for him because Stephen just inserted himself into the situation and wouldn’t let Tony chase him away.”

“Tony kept saying that we had it under control,” Darcy chuckled. “Stephen would roll his eyes and calmly overrule Tony to make sure that Stevie had the best care possible. He threw out about five psychologists before he found someone he trusted with Steve’s therapy.”

“He sounds like a good man,” James fought the words past his lips, wanting to contribute to this somehow. 

“He’s the best,” Darcy confirmed. “I don’t know who the fuck else would put up with Tony.”

“But anyway,” Steve continued. “I was in the hospital for a bit, and then got transferred to out-patient therapy and we started to realize that all those times I was, as you guys called them, in my head when we were growing up was actually depressive tendencies and even some minor depressive episodes.”

“But you were-”

“I swear to God if you call him peppy or whatever, I’ll hit you,” Darcy interrupted. “It’s a chemical thing, not mood swings.”

James nodded, making a mental note to Google everything possible about ‘depressive tendencies’ and if that was the same as ‘depression’ so that he’d be prepared if this conversation was maybe an overture to more conversations. For in the past two days, and especially the past two hours, he’d realized that he _ needed _ more from this place and these people. Whether they could give him any of it - or that he earned it - remained to be seen, but he was going to be prepared. 

“Okay, so are you... “ James ran his hand through his hair as he fought for the words. “Are you balanced now?”

“Most days,” Steve smiled. “Most days. With the help of meds and the tools I learned in therapy, I feel pretty in control of my own skin.”

“You fucking threw him for a loop today, chief,” Darcy remarked and got a _ look _ from Steve. She replied with a middle finger and a raised eyebrow and Steve sighed. 

“You did,” Steve confessed. “I wasn’t prepared for you to be at the festival not on business, and it shocked me.”

“I’m sorry,” James said, with more confidence than he felt. It was all _ so much _ to take in. 

“Thank you,” Steve said at the same time Darcy said, “for what?”

His head bounced back and forth between the two. “I’m sorry that I caused him to have some sort of episode,” he replied to Darcy. 

“Are you sorry you were so awful? Are you sorry that you hurt all of us? Are you sorry that_ you left_?” Darcy spat. 

“Darce, he explained-” Steve interjected, like the diplomat he was. 

“Fuck off, Rogers, he didn’t just leave you, he left _ me too, _and I haven’t heard anything about how he did that so goddamn easily,” Darcy continued, her voice rising with each clause. 

“It wasn’t easy, Darce,” James replied. “There was no part of that decision or the last twelve years that was _ easy_.”

“Yes, being a billionaire and having an army of servants certainly seems like a hardship,” she replied snootily. 

“Oh, now it’s your turn to fuck off,” James replied, taking a step closer to where she was standing. “If my math is correct, your brother’s net worth is quite a bit higher than mine at the minute, no matter that he still wears band t-shirts he stole from me and Steve back in the 90s. So you can fucking miss me with that indignation. And in terms of my life, yes, not to play ‘who had it worse’ but I was married to a woman who _ loathed _ me for five years and, for the record, am still really fucking gay,” James said sardonically. 

“Despite Barney’s best efforts, eh?” Steve couldn’t help but laugh. 

“Despite Barney’s best efforts, yes,” James smiled. “And never stopped loving you, for the record, so let’s get that out there. Vanessa, like I said, _ loathed _ me and was a raging homophobe. Used to tell me all the time that I was a waste of a good dick, and that was the kinder end of the spectrum.

“So, I worked 90-100 hour weeks to avoid her, went to every charity function that Barney demanded, focused on all the business portfolios he gave me, got my MBA and just kept my head down knowing that some day he would die and I would be free again. I haven’t _ really _ spoken to my sisters in twelve years, or to you two, and I’m realizing as I’ve been here the past few days that I’ve been a walking _ fucking _corpse for a goddamn decade and I’m tired. I’m so, so tired.”

His breath caught on the last word and he stopped fighting the tears. He collapsed onto his bed and just _ sobbed_. He sobbed for the way Barney manipulated so many of them, how much pain his own decisions had caused, and how deeply, deeply lonely he was. He sobbed at how much of Steve and Darcy’s lives he had missed, how much time he had wasted because he took the word of an old angry man and never fought back, how he hadn’t even been at Tony’s wedding. 

As the bed dipped on either side of him, he realized he had been saying most of that out loud, as Darcy and Steve both began to respond. He heard murmurs of forgiveness from Steve, and reminders to breathe from Darcy. 

When it all finally subsided, and he could breathe again, he felt Darcy’s hand on his jaw. She turned his face towards her and kissed his forehead. “I’m still fucking furious,” she whispered, “but it’s more at Barney than you.”

He chuckled. “I think I’m only beginning to realize how fucking furious I am, both at him and at myself.”

“Well,” Steve replied from his other side, “being mad at yourself won’t get you anywhere. I learned that in therapy - year two, I think.”

“But look at all I fucking wasted just because - “

Steve rested his hand on James’ shoulder to stop him. “No. That way lies madness. I don’t know much, but I know that self-flagellation should only take place in the presence of a licensed professional.”

“Oh, how kinky,” Darcy snarked. 

“You know what I mean, Darce,” Steve rolled his eyes. 

“I do.” She smiled and leaned into James. “I have _ missed you_, you idiot.”

“I’ve missed you, too, both of you,” James smiled. “And I _ am _sorry, I realized Darcy asked me if I am, and I am. I’m more sorry than I can say. I’ve missed being Bucky. No one’s called me that since I left.”

There was a pause and James felt the pair of them shift. Another decision was being made. 

“Bucky,” Steve replied, and something in James _ broke open_. “We’re willing to try to build something again if you are.”

“I am,” he replied. “I don’t know how, but I know I want to.”

“Oh, you think _ we _ fucking know?” Darcy asked, and the trio laughed. “I just know that we used to be fucking unstoppable when we were together and, while Steve and I have been muddling along fairly well, it would be nice to have you home.”

_ Home_. The word settled in his soul and began to take root. He realized that since he left Sanditon, he had never really been _ home_. 

“Home sounds nice,” he smiled, and leaned into the hugs. “Home sounds really, really nice.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> kocuria's note: so, like I said, this was supposed to be a 3k fluffy Hallmark thingie, and instead, well. This beautiful angst happened. I started flailing in excitement the moment I saw the first draft of this chapter, and I still haven't really stopped.
> 
> betheflame’s note: basically, if you guys enjoy this chapter, thank ko. Also, as a quick information note, marriage equality was passed in Massachusetts in 2004, and in the entire United States in 2015. So the plan to go to MA was actually the only part of Bucky’s plan that made sense to people *not* in generational trauma. 😂


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we see how they begin to rebuild themselves.

_WhatsApp Chat: #StarkSibs_

_Tony: You okay with this?_

_Darcy: With…_

_Darcy: Bucky?_

_Tony: No, the metaphysical state of the ozone layer._

_Tony: Of course I fucking mean Buckaroo._

_Darcy: I told you, the guy who sobbed all over me - there was slobber - can stay in my life as long as he wants. I’m just not sure I trust he’s a permanent addition._

_Tony: He just signed the lease on the apartment over the bakery. That’s close._

_Darcy: I know. I gave him the key to look around. I charged him three months up front and he paid six._

_Tony: Fuck._

_Darcy: Steve said we have to choose to trust him._

_Tony: Steve’s a golden retriever whose favorite human just came back._

_Darcy: You keep saying he’s a dog, he’s not. He’s a cat. I’m not having this argument again._

_Tony: And I’m a meerkat. Fine. Whatever. You get my point._

_Darcy: Do you trust me, brother?_

_Tony: With my life._

_Darcy: Then trust me with this._

* * *

Bucky took a deep breath and looked around his apartment.

His apartment. In _Sanditon_.

After he’d cleaned himself up from the mess he’d become in Steve and Darcy’s arms, he’d had some decisions to make. So, he’d called Nat - who did not sound sufficiently surprised enough, as far as he was concerned - and they strategized what it would look like for Bucky to run everything from Sanditon for a few months while he tried to rebuild himself.

_“I don’t see it as a problem,” Nat replied, with a smile Bucky could hear in her voice. “I’m not calling you that stupid name, though, James.”_

_Bucky laughed. “No, I think that one will stay reserved for family.”_

_There were a few beats of silence before she continued. “He’s your happily ever after, isn’t he?”_

_“Yeah, Nat, he is. We just gotta see if I’m still his.”_

From there, it had taken about three hours to find an apartment and a further two weeks to get everything settled. The IKEA trip alone took about seven years, he figured, even though Steve assured him it had only been two hours. But on the first of November, he’d gotten in the car he never used and headed north - vowing to only return to Manhattan when he had to.

Being in ownership of a multinational company meant that Bucky had very little actual oversight over day-to-day operations. He read reports, and dealt with shareholders, and talked to all of his various Vice Presidents and he usually did that from a corner office in midtown Manhattan while wearing a three-piece suit and sending emails to Nat. He figured he could probably do most of them while sitting in the living room of his rented apartment while wearing pajamas and was willing to test the theory. Or, at least, pajama bottoms. Gotta keep up some illusions.

The VOIP tone on his computer sounded, breaking him out of his reverie, and a quick check to the screen showed that it was one of the Chinese divisions needing his attention. He sighed, made sure his tie was straight and his beard neat before hitting “accept”.

“Xiānshēng nǐ hǎo. Wǔ, nǐ hǎo ma?” Bucky smiled as he greeted the other man in Mandarin and the conversation took off from there. There were problems with supply chain management - typical - and a particularly lazy shift manager - annoying - but otherwise things were running smoothly; the overly efficient Mr. Wu had simply wanted to alert James to a possible change in itinerary for the trip James was due to take in the new year. The calm order of that call was good, because Bucky’s next phone call was with the division in Ottawa, where everything was a dumpster fire.

There was a knock on the apartment door at the end of the call with Ottawa and Bucky was thrilled to use the excuse to cut the team off. He swung open the door to find Steve holding two cups of coffee and a bag from the bakery below.

“You got a minute?”

Bucky grinned and fought the instinct to kiss Steve as he gestured to the living room. “Darcy says you know your way around up here.”

Steve nodded as he placed the snacks and coffees down on the side table. “Helped them renovate it - Darcy and Tony - back when they bought the building. Darcy lived here for a bit, too.”

“And you built the bed?”

Steve’s ears tinged a gentle pink and Bucky fought to keep from biting his lip. Steve’s embarrassment over something he did well had always been one of Bucky’s kryptonites. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “You built all the furniture in Stephen and Tony’s, I’m told, or at least all the ones that are built for his chair. You built the bed in here - which I totally get why you wouldn’t let me buy one at IKEA - and the tables for the bakery? That’s a big deal, Stevie.”

“It started out as a hobby,” Steve cleared his throat. “I needed something to do with my hands and - you remember Flat Cap Mark?”

“From college? The kid from Arizona who walked around looking like an extra on the set of Angela’s Ashes?”

“Yeah, him,” Steve smirked as the two men settled onto Bucky’s (new IKEA) couch. “When I got back up to Colby after… after us, I was kinda a mess. And I needed to do something with my free time and he taught me how to whittle.”

“Whittle.”

“Yup.”

“Like at Colonial Williamsburg?”

“Listen, if there’s shade throwing -”

Bucky laughed and held up his hands in surrender. “I retract the shade.”

“Anyway,” Steve grinned and the immediate attraction that pooled in Bucky’s gut at the sight was not unwelcome. “I graduated from whittling to other stuff pretty quick and then, well, the furniture was really just about watching YouTube a bunch and because Stephen and Tony were so overwhelmed and I had to do something and we all know I can’t cook. So…”

“What happened?” Bucky asked softly.

“Car accident,” Steve replied quickly. “Drunk driver, he was killed on impact and Stephen was crushed, it was… it was touch and go for a while, actually, and that’s when Tony figured out the clean energy reactor he sold to the Canadian government because he basically refused to sleep.”

Bucky barked out a laugh. “Only Tony would create world changing technology while his husband is unconscious.”

“Did you know that was his?” Steve asked and Bucky could feel the shift in the question, the weight of the words Steve wasn’t saying.

“Yes,” Bucky replied simply, as he bit his lip and weighed his words. “I couldn’t follow you, or Darcy, I couldn’t… But about five years ago, I was at an investment conference and everyone couldn’t stop talking about Tony. It couldn’t be my Tony, I thought immediately -” Bucky saw Steve’s jaw clench and was reminded how much work there was to do - “but then I realized that of course it was. Of course he was changing the world from his parents' basement.”

“He’d bought your land by then, I think, and built the farm,” Steve said. “The reactor was finished?”

Bucky nodded.

“Then, yeah, he was on the old Barnes Farm,” Steve gave a sardonic smile. “I think some of the old folks still call it that.”

“I’m glad he got it,” Bucky said as he took another sip of his coffee and fixed his eyes somewhere beyond Steve’s head. “I’m glad… I’m fucking pissed about so much some days I don’t even know how to breathe. But then I remember that Tony the futurist saved some things and you saved some others and Darcy held you all together, and I just get this wave of thankfulness.”

Steve let that hang in the air for a minute before he took a deep breath and reached for Bucky’s hand. He laced his fingers through Bucky’s and Bucky was afraid to breathe.

“Darcy and I,” Steve said and then paused to swallow. “Darcy and I used to fantasize about finding you and dismembering you.”

In the future, when they told their story of how they knit themselves back together, Bucky would tell people that it was that moment that he knew everything was going to be truly okay. They weren’t performing for each other, they weren’t going to hide the last decade, they were going to be okay.

_If we’re doing this…_ Bucky squeezed Steve’s hand and inched closer to him on the couch. “Vanessa was with other people our whole marriage. I can’t even call it cheating because she did it with my blessing. God, I hated that woman.”

“I don’t know what to do with the fact that you told me you’ve never stopped loving me,” Steve replied.

“I was kind of hoping you’d discover you were bi and marry Darcy.”

“I told the entire town I was allergic to macadamia nuts because they remind me too much of you.”

“I missed this game,” Bucky whispered. “I missed being able to say whatever was on my mind.”

Just after Steve’s 15th birthday, the pair of them hadn’t been able to stop fighting.

_“I don’t want to talk about it!” Steve screamed at Bucky as they marched along the river path._

_“I don’t care!” Bucky yelled back, relishing the privacy. This was the only place they could be alone and be themselves. Everywhere else was either full of Darcy or full of people who had opinions about his last name. “You’re being fucking weird and I don’t like it. I’m not a mind reader, Stevie.”_

_“Well, what if I want to tell you something but I don’t want to talk about it,” Steve conceded and Bucky absorbed that information._

_“Then we make a rule. Let’s call it the Say Anything Game. We each get to say something we need to say but can’t talk about. Let’s say… three times each.”_

_Steve considered this and nodded. “Three things each and then we’ll talk about them when we’re ready?”_

_“We’ll discuss the definition of ‘ready’ at a later date,” Bucky drawled in a fake Southern accent he used when he wanted to sound senatorial and Steve rolled his eyes._

_“Fine,” Steve paused on the path and Bucky came to stand beside him. “I think Tony’s drinking too much but I’m afraid to talk to him about it.”_

_Swallowing his fourteen follow-up questions, Bucky responded. “I’m really afraid of my grandfather.”_

_“I really want kids someday.” Oh, that’s something we’re going to come back to._

_“I don’t really know what being gender non-binary means but I don’t want to ask Okoye, because that feels rude.”_

_“How much you and Darcy make me happy scares me. We feel too young.”_

_“I know that if you’re Tom Hanks, I’m Meg Ryan and that scares me, too.”_

_Something sacred started happening that night - especially after they both got brave enough to unpack their statements._

There was silence for a few moments before Steve said. “When was the last time you were honest?”

Bucky looked at him. “Before the night in the Arms?”

Steve nodded.

Bucky tilted his head, calculating. “True, bare, raw, honesty like right now? The night before I left when I told you I never wanted to live without you.”

Steve took a shaky breath. “Twelve years of lying is hard to un-do. You ready?”

“You know what shocked me the most about coming back here?” Bucky changed the subject with a grin. “That Sanditon actually got a therapist.”

Steve laughed, quickly brushing a few tears away with his free hand. “Dr. McClain is really good.”

“I have my first appointment on Tuesday.”

“Good,” Steve murmured, squeezing Bucky’s hand once more and releasing it. “I have no idea when I’m going to be ready for anything, Buck.”

“In my head, I want to undress you with my teeth, but I think I’d probably have a panic attack of shame or something half way through the buttons on your shirt,” Bucky admitted.

“So we go slow.”

“So we go slow,” Bucky affirmed.

* * *

* * *

“Stark,” Bucky called one morning at the beginning of December as he stepped into Tony’s vast workshop. The frost was still hanging on the trees and Bucky had been able to see his breath as he climbed out of the car.

“Good morning, Mr. Barnes,” came the gentle British voice and Bucky jumped.

“Jesus, sorry, Jarvis, I forget he’s got you out here, too.”

“Not a problem, Mr. Barnes,” the AI replied. “Sir is in the basement.”

Bucky nodded and wound his way through the aisles and down the stairs. From the outside, Tony’s workshop looked like a fairly ramshackle and run-of-the-mill barn, the kind that dotted the landscape of the former American colonies. Inside, however, was a completely different story. It was the tech version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory - sans the slave labor.

It also included both a basement and sub-basement because Stephen had insisted on the latter when Tony started experimenting with various things that could, you know, blow up the town. Recently, however, he’d moved away from explosives and more into artificial intelligence.

_“I’m sorry, what the hell is that,” Bucky gestured towards Tony’s watch as they sat at at a Sunday family dinner not long after Bucky signed the lease - his first one since he came back, and - really - his first one that felt real since he left._

_“It’s a watch, Barnes, you may be familiar with the evolution of timekeeping since the sundial -”_

_“Why is it talking,” Bucky interrupted._

_“Oh,” Tony brightened. “Meet Jarvis, he’s the AI I’m building.”_

_“You’re building an AI who lives in your watch,” Bucky said slowly._

_“He’s building an AI that he wants to live in our house,” Stephen clarified from across the table. “I’ve confined it to the watch for now. And do not get me started on why it has to be a British voice.”_

As Tony and Stephen squabbled over the tone of Jarvis, Bucky smiled and took a breath. This was why he had come home.

“Bucky Bear!” Tony called as Bucky entered the basement. “To what do I owe the pleasure.”

“I have hated that nickname since I was six, Stark,” Bucky shook his head.

“Which is why I will continue to use it until we are both well past sixty. You need a big brother, kid.”

“I am three years younger than you,” the old argument fell out of Bucky’s mouth before he could stop it. Then he realized he didn’t want to.

“Stands.” Tony grinned and put down the screwdriver he had been holding. “Want a drink?”

When Bucky nodded, he noticed a small robot whiz over to a fridge and whiz back to present Bucky with a bottle of water. “Thanks, DUM-E,” Bucky patted the bot on its head.

“He’s currently earning his way back into my good graces,” Tony remarked. “He got a little enthusiastic with the fire extinguisher again.”

Bucky laughed. “Well, it’s good to know some things never change.”

The men settle on some of the random pieces of furniture that Tony has scattered through the room - his “thinking” chairs, he calls them, while Stephen calls them his “I don’t want to do the dishes” chairs - and Bucky pulled out a check from his wallet and handed it to Tony.

“What’s this?”

“What I’ve calculated you’ve spent to save this town from my grandfather over the last eight years.”

Tony blinked a few times, clearly trying to calculate how Bucky could know such a thing.

“I talked to Coulson, and Murdock, and Mr. Xavier,” Bucky supplied, with a kind smile gracing his face. “I’m not here to buy everything back or anything, I guess I just wanna know why.”

“I can give you all the altruistic reasons in the world, kid,” Tony smiled, as Bucky rolled his eyes at the nickname, “and some of them were for those reasons. But honestly? A lot of it was to just piss Barney off.”

Bucky threw his head back and laughed, a full body noise that filled the workshop. “Few better reasons, Stark.”

“He used to tell me I’d be a drunk like my dad, and I’d amount to nothing, etcetera, etcetera, so it was particularly wonderful when I bought the bar out from underneath him, and then the pharmacy, and then the grocery store. Took a little while to wrest some of the city buildings from various trusts he put up, but it was really fun to watch him just get so mad at city council meetings.”

“He didn’t know it was you?”

Tony grinned like a cat who got the cream. “Nope. I think I’ve created forty-two shell companies in the last several years, most of which were created with the express purpose to fuck with Barney and to hide who really owned everything.”

“I’ve tracked down sixteen,” Bucky smiled. “I know Carol really owns the pharmacy.”

Tony nodded. “You find the library yet?”

Bucky shook his head. “Only City Hall.”

Tony took a long sip of his water before looking Bucky dead in the eyes. “I couldn’t actually buy the library building, but all the books? They all belong to Steve. The computers belong to Darcy, and the other miscellaneous stuff belongs to Stephen. They’ve just all trusted it over to the city for management.”

The sound of Bucky’s laughter once again filled the space. “How very Harold Hill of you.”

“Well, we had trouble right here in River City, Bucko, and someone had to solve it.”

Bucky quieted quickly. “There was, and you did. Thank you.”

“I did it for you, James,” Tony said softly. “The you that’s sitting in front of me, the one I grew up with, the one who loves us, the one who I swore would come back. Because the guy who left, I didn’t know who he was, Buckaroo.

“I couldn’t figure out what old Barney had on you, so I ran every algorithm I could think of, every scenario - one of them actually led to the invention of my engine injection system, so thanks for that billion-dollar cash injection. But what I forgot to account for was that you were a scared kid and he was a bully and he threatened Becs and Steve and Darcy. And you thought he was fucking Voldemort, but you didn’t realize that we had all the horcruxes, pal. One word from you and we would have destroyed him and protected you with our lives, you know that, right?”

Bucky blinked and noticed the smear of tears across his vision. “I know that now.”

Tony cocked his eyebrow. “Twelve year delay, but I guess whatever. You gonna put a ring on it?”

“Cutting to the chase, there, Stark,” Bucky chuckled.

“He’s been moping around my shop and fucking tourists for too long. Go give me nieces and nephews, please, because god knows my sister is going to take a damn age with Wilson. Adoption is going to be faster than her reproductive cycle.”

Bucky laughed and asked Tony what would have happened to all the properties if he hadn’t come home.

“Oh,” Tony waved a hand. “They’re split evenly between Steve and Darcy and then their various offspring. I figured that’s what you would have wanted - for the people you loved the most to carry on your family legacy.”

Tears sprung to Bucky’s eyes, entirely unbidden. That’s the core of it, isn’t it. Steve and Darcy are the family legacy I want to carry on. “Well, fuck a duck, Stark. You are a genius.”

“The rumors are true,” Tony winked.

They were interrupted temporarily as Jarvis reminded Tony of Pepper’s imminent arrival for a meeting.

“Well, I’ll get going anyway,” Bucky said as he rose to his feet.

“Hey, Bucky Bear?”

“Hmmm?”

“Welcome home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pop culture FYIs: River City & Harold Hill are from "The Music Man", a musical about a man whose life is an elaborate act until he meets a woman who _owns_ him. Voldemort & Horcruxes are from "Harry Potter".


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note from flame: 
> 
> This chapter features art not only from kocuria, but from the INCREDIBLE Em, who provided the drawing you’ll find in the middle of the chapter. She graciously took a rush commission and I can not recommend her or her work highly enough. Find her on [Twitter](http://www.twitter.com/em_dibujsb) and [Tumblr](https://em-dibujsb.tumblr.com/) and commission her for your next dream art!

“Why are Christmas tree lights actually the worst?” Darcy complained. She was draped in several rounds of them as she and Steve had tried to untangle the ones she put away the year previous.

“Well, if you had wrapped them-”

“I don’t need your A-type right now, Steven,” Darcy snapped. “Right now, I need to not be covered in twinkle lights.” She heard a snort from the part of the room where Bucky was sitting and snapped her head in his direction. “What about it, Barnes?”

Bucky rolled his lips between his teeth to hold back an out right laugh. “I am the picture of innocence over here.”

“You haven’t been the picture of innocence since the time in 5th grade when Ma and Winnie had you and me play angels in the town nativity,” Steve retorted, tracing a few of the strands of lights around Darcy and managing to untangle a few.

“Oh, that was a truly bad call on their parts,” Darcy giggled. She cast a glance at her boyfriend, who was watching the three of them with a bemused expression as he kept one eye on the Patriots game. “The two of them could not stop giggling.”

“Well, that’s ‘cause they had you as the Virgin Mary and even then we knew that was wrong,” Bucky smirked.

“Oh fuck you,” Darcy retorted.

“Not until you grow a dick,” Bucky responded and the pair shared a smile. Old rhythms in new voices still felt like coming home.

The last six weeks of Bucky’s life had been both a whirlwind and completely settling. Between re-examining his entire life’s purpose (_What is a legacy? What do I want mine to be if it’s not CEO of Barnes Limited? Can I be a different Barnes than Barney and still have that role? Do I even want to be CEO?)_ and starting to build or re-build something with Darcy, and Sam, and Stephen, and Tony, and…

Steve.

In the midst of his entire life re-writing itself, Bucky had been thrilled to discover that Steve was still solid, still the man he could wrap his panic around and who would anchor him on the days everything got to be too much. He’d squandered that once and so help him God, he was never doing it again.

There was a beautiful freedom in this season of their relationship, as well, not only because they didn’t have to physically sneak around anywhere - man, did he like just grabbing Steve and kissing him whenever he could - but because the pair had committed to transparency.

_“I want to do this,” Steve said seriously one evening, with kiss swollen lips and mussed hair._

_“This like-”_

_“Like us forever,” Steve said. “Cards on the table, we’ve been dating or whatever for, like, a month and it’s great, but I’m not looking for you to be my just-for-now boyfriend.”_

_“What have I done that makes you think I want that?” Bucky shook his head in confusion._

_Steve grimaced. “Okay, that came out wrong.”_

_“You wanna make it come out right?”_

_Steve paused and ran his hands over his face a few times - a move Bucky had learned was a nervous tic - and began again. “I was destroyed when you left the last time. I’m not game for that again, but I’m also not on board with you not in my life. Like I told you, you’re it for me and I was getting pretty used to being the bachelor everyone in town kinda pitied but no one would say it. I want to start building something here with you that will last forever, but if you’ve got one foot out the door, I wanna know.”_

_“Steve,” Bucky tenderly reached his hand to cradle Steve’s cheek. “I was an idiot for a long time, and I’m sure it’s a permanent condition so I’ll be an idiot again, but I’m working as hard as I can with Dr. McClain to mitigate any future damage. Our mistake last time was that I didn’t talk to you, and we’ve agreed to not make that mistake any more.”_

_“So, you’re saying you’re in,” Steve breathed._

_“Steven, consider this my pre-proposal. We’ve got some shit to work out, and I know I have to rebuild trust with you and Darce and everyone, and there’s logistics, but someday I’m gonna marry you and it’s going to be great.”_

Bucky glanced around his apartment as Steve and Darcy continued to bicker about trimming the tree. It was the middle of December and he’d given himself until the 20th to wrap up all day-to-day operations in Manhattan he couldn’t oversee from Sanditon. Nat was going to take over as VP of Operations as they transitioned him out of being CEO. The board had not been comfortable with an immediate departure so quickly after his grandfather’s death, which he understood. He agreed to stay on and work remotely, traveling into the office for one week per month through July. There was noise about an executive headhunt, but he wanted Nat. He just needed to prove it to the board that she could do it.

And, well, if he’d been able to get Stevie back, a little corporate strategy was a piece of cake.

He didn’t really live in Manhattan anymore, which was going to make the papers he had sitting in his briefcase to sign basically a formality. The shelves in Sanditon were lined with the books he loved, his favorite running shoes were toed off by the door, and he was thinking about how to rearrange the living room to get the rescue dog he’d been eyeing at the shelter. Darcy, Tony, Sam, Steve, and Stephen all had “their spots” when they came over for movie nights or to watch a game or whatever. Both Darcy and Steve kept their favorite snacks there, just as his were in their cupboards as well.

Nat had been up the day before and he smiled at the memory of her commentary.

_“There is more of you in this apartment than I’ve seen in the entire eight years I’ve worked for you. Sanditon is a good look for you, boss.”_

“Bucky,” Darcy called. “Earth to Bucky.”

He shook his head and grinned. “Sorry, being sappy.”

“Oh,” she smiled and he noticed she was free of the Christmas lights. She plopped next to him on the couch and he internally winced at the distance she still kept between them. She had the Stark need for physical contact, just like Tony, but was still holding herself back a bit. He knew he needed to be more patient, it was just that every time she draped herself over Stephen or sat in Steve’s lap, it hurt. Her contact with Sam was different, of course - but he’d been the grateful recipient of platonic Darcy cuddles for nearly 20 years of his life. Now that he was close to her again, it was painful to not be getting them.

_Soon_, he reminded himself. _She gets to do this on her time_.

“Sappy is allowed,” she continued, once again pulling him out of a reverie. “What were you doing this time last year?”

He barked a laugh. “I was in a tux, I’m sure, because it’s two Saturdays before Christmas and I basically spent December at parties.”

“Are there,” Steve cleared his throat from across the room. “Are there photos?”

Bucky made eye contact with his boyfriend, and noticed Steve’s pupils were darker than they had been a few moments ago. “Why, yes, I do believe there are several hundred.”

“Good,” Steve affirmed as Darcy howled. Sam soon joined in ribbing on Steve good naturedly and Bucky lost himself again in the commotion of community.

* * *

“Hot chocolate stand,” Steve said.

“Check,” Wanda replied.

“Petty cash for the pony rides?”

“Clint has extra behind the bar.” Pepper stomped her feet to fight the cold.

“All lights on the Christmas Tree are working?”

Bucky rolled his eyes. “Guys, is he this bad every year?”

“Worse, usually,” Darcy responded and rubbed her gloved hands together. “Stevo, we have run this festival for eight straight years without a hitch. Everyone will get a little too drunk on Clint’s mulled wine or the Bailey’s spiked hot chocolate, we’ll eat May’s cookies, and then crowd into the church for the midnight service and Reverend Carruthers will roll her eyes good naturedly at how loud I am, but be really excited that you and Sam do the harmonies on ‘O Holy Night,” she concluded. “Now, I’m fucking freezing and have an errand to run, can I go please?”

Steve rolled his eyes and waved her off, turning his attention back to Wanda. “There’s about three hours before everything kicks off, so go get something to eat and rest up and I’ll see you at 7.”

The Sanditon Christmas Eve Celebration was a 100ish year tradition. What started as a giant potluck prior to the midnight service had evolved into a three-part evening that started with a progressive dinner through ten houses that volunteered every year and lasted through the night. It all kicked off at 5pm when Clint opened his doors for all the drinks that anyone would need, as well as a warm place for folks to gather as they waited for the all-town nativity pageant, which always happened at precisely 8:30, before everyone packed into St. Andrew’s Episcopal for a ecumenical midnight service.

In between those tentpole events, kids could ride ponies, folks could wander from house to house and their way through bite-size portions of a ten-course meal, Clint would make sure no one ran out of their hot beverage of choice, and Sam would give all his deputies the night off and patrol the whole thing himself.

It was Steve’s favorite night of the year.

“Hey, boyo,” Bucky murmured into Steve’s ear once Wanda left them alone. “You got twenty minutes to give your very needy boyfriend?”

Steve laughed. “I believe I can work you into my schedule.”

The pair meandered through the main square and into Steve’s office. Steve started to launch into a set of questions when he noticed that Bucky had gone into the conference room and re-entered with an envelope.

“What?”

Bucky smiled. “I know you’re famous for the speeches here, but give me a minute?” He gestured to the couch and Steve sat obligingly.

“In all the years I was gone, this was the night I got the most homesick. I had a tradition - I’d go to church, cry at all the carols because I couldn’t hear you and Darcy on either side of me, and then go home, eat roast pork lo mein, and drink an entire bottle of Jameson 10 year.”

“Damn,” Steve breathed out.

“Yeah, not sad to not be doing it tonight,” Bucky smiled. “So I knew that when it was time to do this, to give you what I’m about to give you, I needed it to be tonight, because if I can be part of Sanditon again on Christmas Eve, then I can do it anytime.”

“You sound like one of those made-for-TV movies, Buck,” Steve quipped.

“I kinda feel like one tonight, Stevie,” Bucky confessed and handed Steve the envelope in his hands. “Merry Christmas.”

“What is this?”

“Why don’t you look with your eyes and not with your mouth,” Bucky suggested and rolled his eyes as his boyfriend tore open the manilla envelope.

“This is a real estate disclosure form,” Steve said slowly, “to an apartment in Manhattan.”

“Umhm,” Bucky hummed, waiting for Steve to read further.

“And it’s attached to a deed to your family house.”

“Yeah.”

Steve looked up at Bucky with a sheen of tears in his eyes. “You’re serious. You’re here permanently?”

Bucky nodded. “I sold the apartment in New York as of last week. When I need to go back for meetings, I’m going to stay with Nat.”

“But you could have kept that for-”

“No,” Bucky said emphatically. “No, I needed to get rid of it for me. It would have been too easy for me to run when I got scared, when things felt… Let’s just say I knew I needed to not give myself an escape route for the days when I’m an idiot.”

Steve smiled knowingly. “But you’re my idiot.”

“For as long as you’ll have me, yeah,” Bucky replied softly and leaned into Steve for a kiss.

“This is the best way,” Bucky said some time later, “to tangibly show you that I’m here to stay. I accepted the house, but I also asked Darcy if I could stay in the apartment for a little while longer.”

“Why?”

“Well, that’s the next part of this,” Bucky admitted. “It needs some work, some updates and renovations and I was thinking it could be ours.”

“The Barnes Mansion.”

“Yes.”

“_Ours_.”

“I mean, I like Barnes-Rogers Mansion,” Bucky said.

“I like my house,” Steve replied slowly.

“I know,” Bucky said quickly, “and we’re on no timeline here. But you have a two bedroom craftsman and that’s a twelve room multi-story with a huge yard. More room for dogs and woodworking and kids.”

Bucky’s voice wavered slightly on the last word, like he was worried the Steve he loved once upon a time had changed his mind about fatherhood.

“You still want five,” Steve smiled in response and Bucky let out a breath.

“I love you,” Bucky replied earnestly. “I want to do life with you forever if we have five kids and no dogs or if we have five dogs and no kids. I don’t care. I just want to be with you.”

“Well,” Steve replied, cupping Bucky’s jaw. “This is the best Christmas I’ve certainly ever had.”

Hands wandered and lips met and promises were whispered until Steve’s phone buzzed with an incoming call. Seeing that it was one of the city council members, he rolled his eyes and showed the phone to Bucky, who nodded.

“I’ll see you at Clint’s,” Bucky whispered and Steve nodded.

“Yes, Ralph, what can I do for you?”

Bucky knew that conversation wasn’t going to be a quick one as soon as he’d seen the phone screen and figured that Clint probably needed a few extra hands brewing the mulled wine. He grabbed his jacket and scarf and made the four block walk where Clint immediately put him to work. Before Bucky knew it, it was 5:45 and someone told him Darcy was looking for him out in one of the side rooms off the main dining area.

When he entered the small enclave, his feet simply stopped moving.

“Is that?” he whispered and gestured to what was in her hands and she nodded. He forced his feet to move slowly towards her as tears clouded his vision.

“Okay,” Stephen muttered. “Someone fill me in.”

The sound of his new friend’s voice was enough to break Bucky out of his reverie and he looked around in surprise. Their entire family was gathered, clearly waiting for this moment. Tony looked at Bucky and Darcy and nodded, as though giving them permission to tell the story.

“Well,” Darcy said with a shaky voice, “Bucky gave this to me when we were six. It’s from that old Pretty, Pretty Princess game.” She handed the old, battered tiara to Stephen for him to take a closer look. “Howard had beaten Tony pretty badly a few days earlier and I was in my cycle of reaction - which meant I was bossing Steve and Bucky around and they were being wonderful. I’d been wanting this game for months.”

“She talked about nothing else,” Steve offered. “Every commercial we saw, every time we passed it in the window of O’Toole’s Toy Shop on Main Street.”

“So we bought it for her,” Bucky replied, his voice scratchy with tears. “Me and Stevie went to Mom and Sarah and did a bunch of extra chores so that we could buy her the game because we wanted her to know she was our princess.”

“Who the fuck are you three,” Clint murmured and a few people chuckled.

“I opened it on Christmas Eve,” Darcy continued, “right before the festival. Bucky put the tiara on my head and told me that he and Stevie had made swords to protect me from the fierce dragon.”

“Lightsaber toys covered in tin foil,” Steve supplied.

“And we brought them to the festival and Darce wore the tiara,” Bucky continued. “There’s a picture somewhere of us fighting that Rumlow kid no one liked during the pageant.”

“I wore the tiara every single year until the year Bucky left,” Darcy continued. “I was the town Christmas Fairy for years, handing out candy to little kids and generally being ridiculous.”

“The last thing she yelled at me, when I went to say goodbye to her and Tony, was that I had ruined the Christmas Fairy because she’d never be able to wear my tiara again,” Bucky took Darcy’s face in his hands and kissed her forehead.

“You put it on me every single fucking Christmas, you asshat, how was I supposed to?” she whispered, though loud enough for everyone to hear.

“And today?”

“Well, don’t you know that the best stories are when the cursed prince remembers who he is and comes home?”

Bucky didn’t bother to hold back the tears at that point, as he took the tiara back from Stephen and lovingly placed it on Darcy’s head. “Well, now, I suppose all is right in the kingdom again.”

The pair stood for a few seconds before they motioned for Steve and Tony to come into a group hug. The quad cried for a few seconds together before hands reached out to grab Sam, and Stephen, and Clint, and Pepper, and everyone else who had gathered in that small space, where the ordinary became the extraordinary. In which a fairly simple act of memory became a remarkable symbol of restoration and when - on the night where the world held its breath, anticipating the arrival of love wrapped in skin - they were all reminded that happily ever afters are real and that love always wins.

* * *

* * *

_ **Four Months Later** _

“Get up,” Darcy called as she blew into Steve and Bucky’s house.

“It’s 7:30 on a Monday night,” Bucky called back as she found him in the living room. Steve was at a school board meeting and he was hoping to get a few episodes of _The Good Wife_ in before Steve got home. He was catching up on all the television he’d missed while being a - to quote Darcy - “sycophantic pod person workaholic”.

“It is also April 17th,” Darcy replied and brandished four jackets on hangers. “Good to know you’re aware of your surroundings. Now, pick one.”

“Why?” Bucky said, not moving from the couch.

“Because you can’t interview for a job as Sanditon High’s new economics teacher wearing Tom Ford and I double checked this morning and those are still the only suits you have. I drove all the way to the Macy’s in Danbury for these, so pick one.”

Bucky got up from the couch slowly and stared at his best friend. “But I don’t have a job interview to be the new economics teacher, I didn’t even know that Frank retired.”

“He gave notice last week, now fucking pick one.”

“The brown one,” Bucky said. “Why am I just finding out about this now?”

“Listen, when I was managing your life when we were growing up, everything was wonderful. You left me and it went to shit. Figured you’d want me back,” Darcy grinned at him.

Bucky blinked away a surprising rush of tears. “You ain’t wrong, Stark. You gonna pick out my shoes for me, too?”

* * *

_ **One Year Later** _

“Should I apologize or say you’re welcome for suggesting this idea to them?” Stephen raised an eyebrow across the table to Steve.

“Well, I guess we’re the entrepreneurship widowers,” Steve grinned back and took a bite of his burger.

On the nineteenth night in a row that Bucky and Tony had told their partners to eat without them, the pair had decided to grab dinner together at Clint’s to compare notes.

“I mean,” Steve continued once he finished chewing, “it’s a genius idea. With both of the connections, and Bucky’s business knowledge and Tony’s ability to raise capital, they’re basically born to be their own version of Shark Tank.”

“You know the seed money is that first check Bucky gave Tony?”

“No,” Steve grinned. “But that makes complete sense. He’s worked it out so that he’s basically living on his salary from the school and about 1/10th of his advisory salary from the company and everything else is going into investments and savings.”

Stephen took a sip of his drink. “I got to listen in on the Zoom call with the first company, that mom and daughter hair product game out of Atlanta?”

Steve raised an eyebrow to indicate he was listening.

“Well, first of all, I learned a lot about hair care and weaves and black hair versus white hair versus indigenous hair and so on. I thought, you know, _hair_, but I was wrong,” Stephen smiled. “And I looked over at them and they were just… Tony couldn’t stop asking questions and Bucky was taking notes so fast that his hand was a blur and they were so kind to these women who had clearly had every door shut in their face.

“They’re going to give those two women mentoring, support, connections, and $5 million and I was so proud I could probably actually burst.”

“And no one will ever know,” Steve smiled. “That’s my favorite part, once Bucky explained it to me. That most investors want credit, and that most angel investors don’t but are hands off, and they’re combining the two.”

“It’s, what, one straight year of no profit before they take over?”

“I think so,” Steve nodded. “I heard a call between Bucky and Nat and Pepper a few months back when they were first starting. The women had some pragmatic tips to ground our dreamers.”

Stephen laughed. “You know, every time someone tells me that marriage is just two people, I think about how I actually would have killed Tony or myself by now if I didn’t have you, Pepper, and Darcy.”

Steve thought of the the ring nestled in his woodworking supply drawer at work. “I certainly hope to find out for myself soon.”

* * *

** _Nine Months Later_ **

“Dearly beloved,” Tony intoned and grinned at his two best friends. “Because you all are, truly, in this room, dearly beloved. Not only by these two idiots, but by their family. We are gathered today to affirm the covenant of James Buchanan Barnes and Steven Grant Rogers and I know I’m not the only one who feels like this day is a lifetime in the making.”

Darcy peered around Steve’s back to see Nat standing just behind Bucky. They’d become quite close over the past several years and Darcy was grateful - she’d never had many close female friends. Now she had Nat, and Pepper, and that new science teacher the school had hired - Jane.

They were at the Riverside Farm in Vermont with 25 of their closest friends and family. Tucked into the Green Mountains, the venue was exactly what they’d been looking for - away from Sanditon, low-key, and visually stunning. As born and bred New England boys, nothing made them happier than New England in the fall, so an October wedding was a no-brainer. Darcy and Nat had picked their own best women dresses - coordinating with the wine, cream, green autumnal theme Pepper had designed for the day. Darcy had been particularly thrilled that her dress came with pockets.

_Focus, Wilson,_ she berated herself and caught Sam’s grin out of the corner of her eye. He’d told her she wouldn’t be able to focus and she’d argued with him. He pointed back at Steve with his free hand and placed a kiss to their daughter’s head while he was at it.

“I’ve been married for many blissful years, right honey?” Tony called to Stephen, who rolled his eyes while the congregation laughed. Grinning, he continued. “And I’ve learned a thing or two. First, and boys, look at me.”

The two turned their heads towards Tony. Darcy remembered Tony telling them the night before at dinner that they’d forget most of the day, but he was going to make sure they remembered the ceremony.

“You are about to make some vows that you’ll make every day, over and over again, for the rest of your natural lives. You will vow in sickness and health every time one of you gets a cold, or heads in for surgery. You’ll vow to forsake all others every time someone flirts with one of your fine asses, you’ll vow richer or poorer the first time Buck and I screw up one of our investments and you’ll vow for as long as we both shall live every single day.

“The people that say marriage is hard aren’t lying, but they’re also not telling the full truth. Marriage is easy. It’s just two folks legally co-habitating and the government gives us some tax breaks because heteronormative patriarchy blah blah blah. So, marriage is easy.

“Covenant is not. The vows you’ll recite in a few minutes are not marriage - you did that at the courthouse when you got your license. No, my beloved boys who I have loved for nearly all of my life, no. The vows you’re about to make are covenantal and that takes all the work of all the breath in your body for as long as you both shall live. You ready for that, Stevie?”

Darcy could hear Steve swallow as his shoulders shook slightly with tears. She placed a hand on the middle of his back and he leaned into it slightly. “Can’t wait.”

Tony smiled and Darcy could see the sheen of tears in her brother’s eyes. “Buckaroo?”

“Not throwing away my shot here, Stark,” Bucky replied, drawing laughs from the crowd.

“Good, good, you’ll get that shot in a few moments. But first,” Tony raised his voice slightly and looked at her and then at Nat, “I have some words for those of us gathered here. We are a part of their vows. I mean, if you’ve been to a wedding before you’ve probably noticed that, that there’s a bit where we all agree to help them keep their vows, and I think we rush over that too much.

“These absolute muppets,” Tony smiled affectionately as the boys laughed, “are going to need our help. They’re going to need some of us, sometimes, to carry their vows for them when they can’t remember this day or why they chose each other. They’re gonna need you, Darce and Nat, and us, honey, and and everyone else here who calls them family - we’re gonna need to step up sometimes. Marriages might be two people, but covenants can’t be. Covenants are made in community, so are you all up to being community?”

The small crowd all affirmed they were and Tony grabbed Steve and Bucky’s hands.

“I’ll be honest guys, I recommend the covenant. What do you say?”

“I say,” Steve said, his voice shaking but strong, “that I chose him when we were kids and I ain’t gonna stop now.”

“And I say,” Bucky grinned, tears spilling down his cheeks, “that I am my best self when I’m with him, so I definitely choose covenant.”

“Well then,” Tony released their hands and wiped his face. “Let’s go.”

* * *

* * *

As the sound of Etta James’ _At Last_ swirled around them, Steve tightened his grip on his husband as they swayed around the dance floor.

“Hey husband,” Bucky whispered. “I love you.”

“Hey husband,” Steve smiled and pressed a kiss to Bucky’s lips. “I love you, too.”

They swayed in quiet for a few minutes before Bucky spoke again. “What Stark said back there, that was something.”

Steve smiled and pressed his forehead to Bucky’s. “Stephen made him write most of it down and they’ve framed it for us. Darce said it’s already in the house.”

“Good,” Bucky affirmed. “Good.”

A few more moments - Steve heard the DJ announce that the floor was open to everyone else, the song changed, and saw Pepper drag Nat to the floor out of the corner of his eye - and Bucky spoke again.

“So, after this, whuddya say we bunk off to Costa Rica for two weeks?”

“Can we go to one of those places with a swim up bar?”

“You know, I had this other guy booked on a trip with me to one of those, but you’re pretty handsome, so I’ll take you instead.”

“Works for me,” Steve smiled and pulled Bucky in for another kiss.

“Then, after that,” Bucky said, “how about we live happily ever after.”

“God, do I like the sound of that,” Steve laughed.

“Me, too, Stevie,” Bucky grinned. “Me too.”

* * *

Achievements earned as part of the Holiday Movie Challenge 2019. Click [here](https://heamarvel.tumblr.com/holiday) for more info!

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note from kocuria: guys, guys, there's a _tiara. A TIARA!_ I'll forever be flailing about this scene and _holy crap_ that _art_, Em you have absolutely exceeded every single expectation I could've had.
> 
> Etta James' _At Last_ can be listened to [here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-cbOl96RFM) If that isn't a perfect song for those two, I don't know what is.
> 
> note from flame: as we've said a few times, this all started as a 3k second chance story for ko as a thank you for all her gorgeous graphic work for the MHEA events. then, angst monster that she is, she kept asking questions that needed answers and all of a sudden this is what happened. I love writing found family, so if this is the first time we've met - hello! I may have some other fics that would work for you. 
> 
> If you're into Stucky second chances, check out [He Used To Be Mine](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19808539), in which Bucky has been in an abusive relationship with an asshat and Steve helps him find himself again. Looking for some Stucky fluff? Check out [Forts Have Many Purposes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20217247) or [Line Work and Love Notes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670083). I'm a multi-shipper, so loads of other ships to try out as well. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

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